[Copenhagen April 24]
Flophouse America - Monica Strømdahl
First mandatory screening for this year at CPH:DOX academy, 24 March, having its World Premiere in the festival. We've been lucky to have a Q&A after movie with Monica, and the next day with my smaller group.
Big start with the voice over about hard data on housing situation for many families in the US than instantly turns, and gains so much power when we se our main character, young Mikal, recording this voice and being part of this reality. This opens the scenario to bring up a social criticism to the system and society, and the absence of some supporting organisation to raise kids.
80 minutes movie where you get to live with this family and be part of a daily routine and system staying inside the routinary situation they are living. When I finished the movie I was convinced and feeling the power of the film I just watched, impressive, personal and approached such emotional and real. Their life is in the details and they are telling so much, with doing the dishes in the bathtub as a repeated daily work, parents sharing time with Mikal and being one at the time with the feeling that the other one is out there drinking. Love declarations during all the film get us to understand that they are really trying to make this work, while having a horizontal relationship, where they split who is taking responsibilities and treating the 9 y/o kid as he was an adult.
All this is carefully worked with a 'invisible camera' framing the space and the characters with beautiful and powerful decisions. We had close ups and details where we see the fragility and feeble feelings of these humans that are just trying to be happy and carry on. Without extradiegetic music is giving value to every moment happening, pointing out sometimes solitude, some times anger and disappointments; summing up to this, some lonely shots of Mikal in the corridor of shelter they live in.
What we could understand, after the Q&A and talk with the director, is the call from Mikal, so brave, to open his place, his life, to have a footage, so he and his family can see through an outsider eye (just for a little while stranger) of their daily life.
Flophouse America earned DOX: Award Special mention
Thanks to Monica for carefully bringing us this honest living portrait.