Older readers may fondly recall the 1963 Disney feature The Incredible Journey, a live-action wilderness odyssey starring two dogs and a Siamese cat. Flow, winner of this year’s Oscar for Best Animated Feature, is an Incredible Journey for the digital era, with an eco-apocalyptic sensibility and a rather more exotic cast — a black cat, a Labrador, a lemur, a capybara and a lanky white secretary bird, voyaging together on a rickety sailboat. Everyone will love the cat in particular: there are already YouTube clips of pets interacting enthusiastically with flatscreen TVs showing the sleek, saucer-eyed creature. But the real star of Flow is the water.
This element makes the most dramatic entrance — a torrential rush from nowhere, later gradually submerging trees, hills, giant cat statues. Brilliantly realised through CGI, the fluid seeps, splashes, filters light in multiple different ways. The landscapes are similarly impressive: dense undergrowth, labyrinthine temples, lofty outcrops recalling Avatar or Roger Dean’s illustrations for 1970s prog rock LPs.
The animals have a rougher, unfinished quality, but the characterisation is flawless, whether they are behaving realistically or showing human characteristics — like the nervy lemur restlessly hoarding any nick-nacks it can get its paws on. The cat, our central protagonist, has a wonderfully lithe repertoire of movements, its hesitant pawsteps into heroism smartly calculated to guide younger viewers into imaginative immersion.
Directed and co-written by Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis, Flow shows both formidable technical brilliance and ingenuity, not least because it dispenses with dialogue — quizzical mews, chirrups and rhythmic doggy breaths replacing words. But the film can’t avoid a certain vaporous New Age spaciness, notably in a scene that is all bubbles and levitation. There’s no doubt that Flow will captivate children and adults alike — but you suspect that it will be specially cherished by viewers partial to catnip and other exalting natural substances.
★★★☆☆
In UK cinemas from March 21
