Flow review – cat’s entertainment

If there is a cat in your animated film, conventional wisdom dictates that it must be wisecracking, aloof, and preferably voiced by a B-list celebrity. Even the adorable moggies at the heart of many Studio Ghibli properties can’t escape the Cattitude Curse that has long plagued our feline friends in film – but there’s a disruptor in our midst. In his second feature film, which took five and a half years to make using open source software Blender, Gints Zilbalodis centers a small grey cat who doesn’t utter a single word. Neither do his crew mates (a capybara, a dog, a secretarybird and a ring-tailed lemur) on the small boat they find themselves travelling in after a great flood turns the land into an ocean. Instead the cat meows, the dog barks, the bird squawks and the lemur chitters (the capybara is actually voiced by a baby camel as Zilbalodis worried audiences would find actual capybara sounds offputting) as their quintet attempts to navigate a brave new world.

Great care and attention has been devoted to the movement and behaviour of the animal characters, who behave as their real-world counterparts do in nature documentaries rather than in conventional animated films. A narrow-eyed glance from the cat or an enthusiastic bounce from the dog is endearing and familiar, and Zilbalodis proves that we don’t need films to anthropomorphise animals in order to quickly develop a bond with them; it’s human nature to recognise their personalities. This intentional lack of dialogue allows the film’s careful sound design and soaring score (composed by Zilbalodis and Rihards Zaļupe) to take centre stage, creating a film that’s as much about the journey as it is the destination.

Flow’s distinctively digital aesthetic, reminiscent of early video game graphics, may appear crude compared to the slick work of giant animation studios, but what Zilbalodis (also serving as cinematographer and editor) is able to achieve with widely accessible, free software is no less impressive or moving. One scene, in which the plucky cat comes across an injured whale, is more heartfelt than anything Disney have achieved in years, proving budget and bells and whistles are no substitute for keen storytelling and emotional resonance.

Despite being an obvious meditation on the potential for impending climate catastrophe, the film is never cloying or condescending – instead Flow feels warm and delicate, like the fur of a cat who’s been lying in a sun spot all morning. There is a gentleness to its rhythms even with plenty of mild peril, and the emotional beats that the film hits are disarmingly potent as we come to invest heavily in the sweet crew of animals aboard a flimsy wooden vessel. Yet even with its lifelike animals, there’s an ethereal quality to Flow which is transfixing, harkening back to the days of Martin Rosen and Don Bluth. As Disney continues to suffer from a bad case of sequelitis and Ghibli frets over succession, it’s a relief independent animation proves budget is no boundary to innovation.