A timid cat keeps coming back in this animated treasure

By Daniel Paiz

Welcome back to mulling over another movie as Cypher Flicks reviews Flow. Flow is an animated film from Latvia that’s won several awards, including the Grand Prize for Feature Animation at the 2024 Ottawa International Animation Festival and the Jury Award at the 2024 Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Film premieres included showings at both the Cannes Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival amongst other places.

Film director Gints Zilbalodis states this film was crafted in Blender, a free open software program. This film took several years to put together. Animation, capturing the sounds of creatures to add some realism to the story, raising funds for such an endeavor; there’s a lot to accomplish.

Essentially, there’s a lot of hype around a timid cat and other colorful creatures trying not to drown, and for good reason.

What happens to these furballs

These animals are going about their business; exploring their surroundings, eating, and of course, sleeping. As the title might give away, there is water to worry about, and the water keeps rising and rising, seemingly with no end in sight. Our curious cat has to decide between its House of Cat (my title, as it appears this cat had a house with a creative owner at one time) or risk it in the water.

A boat comes along with a capybara aboard, and these two gain a few other furry first mates as the boat sails along (a lemur, secretary bird, and yellow labrador all join after numerous ordeals). There’s a good deal more that happens, but witnessing those interactions and difficulties is better to watch than read.

Why creatures are causing a stir in their two-legged counterparts

People love animals! These creatures also face the unifying goal of survival in chaos. However, there are a lot of life’s bigger questions playing out in this film.

Holding onto what no longer serves you to the point that it could ruin you. Standing up for someone that’s not a part of your community, and your community turning their back on you. Finding your own community. Learning when it’s time to move on. At one point there’s a scene where only one animal realizes that sometimes helping in the short term really hurts in the long-term.

These scenarios and more play out as the water levels rise and the boat sails along.

For some reason when these scenarios unfold under the guise of an animated film, people can be open to working through life’s questions. Part of that is because humans place morality and their own set of values and expectations on said creatures. But also, when it is animals operating from their survival mindset, this causes a clash of sorts. People do not accept that animals have a different operating system. Animals can form relationships, develop bonds, and more.

However, it’s unlikely they select outcomes based off of our belief systems. Their decision-making can be impacted by humans, but only because of environment and what situations arise. This is something that the film might be hinting at when it comes to the continual rising water levels and lack of humans throughout. The animals deal with the flooding and keep living. Meanwhile, the humans either live outside of the impact of the flooding (at higher levels than the water ever gets) or simply made decisions that led to their demise.

This film could be hinting at what happens when adaptation isn’t made, and stubbornness persists. Or, it really could just be saying that things aren’t as complicated as people make them out to be. Animals are enjoyable to watch, and their interactions can teach humans more than one might realize.

Final Verdict

The changing environments are stunning. Water drives the film, and how it encapsulates where an animal is on their journey of learning is done so well. There is a question of where the humans are, but thankfully that’s never answered or truly addressed. Change is hard, but as these animals find out, staying in one place is dangerous, almost to a fatal point.

Also, the whales that appear several times remind me of purrgils and you can’t convince me otherwise.

Animation is an outlet that permits one to escape. This field is also a blank canvas to explore so many questions, so many ideas, and so many creative interpretations that exist on a plane live action simply doesn’t have the freedom to do. Flow is a film that simultaneously can give you around an hour and a half of pleasing visuals, fun animal interactions, and existential reflection.

The nice thing about all of that is, there’s still some levity and a nice break from whatever you’re living through prior to watching this movie.