Florida's Film, Television and the Arts Magazine
Frogtown: The Florida Film Festival's Biggest Surprise
Frogtown is like watching a Nathan Fielder film but not realizing it for the first 90%. The film is a coming-of-age story that feels like an offshoot of The Florida Project, identifying these strange moments where fact and fiction are one within a child’s mind, matching the actual filmmaking. In the case of Hope (Ruby Bailey), she believes in the Frog King, a mythical being that her grandmother, Kathleen (Laurel Collins) saw during her youth. In this case, Kathleen has not grown up. Still stuck on this obsession while trying to bring together her community, she organizes the 1st Annual Frog Parade.
The film knowingly uses two forms that have repeatedly been bashed together, documentary and narrative cinema. This is a different take on the mockumentary because it is so structured and set to the tone of modern documentary filmmaking. The cameramen are super vocal with the subjects at odd moments. The camera goes flying around like a late-period Terrence Malick film, invoking a knowing sense of spirituality while actively commenting on that very active brand of filmmaking within the documentary space. The documentarians become active characters in the film, impacting how the on-screen characters react. Frogtown does not present itself as an objective observation because people react so differently with a camera in their face. The presence of a camera crew is an intrusion into regular life, which allows regular people to go bigger and bolder. You see it with reality tv like Love is Blind where someone may play up a moment or have a speech very obviously planned out that they were waiting to let loose until the cameras were rolling. The potential for virality and fame makes people double down on their wildest dreams, and that makes Kathleen’s fantasies about the Frog King that much more of a match for the documentary form. The beauty of childhood innocence, which Frogtown has a complete and total handle on, is that a camera just does not phase them. Kids see dragons in the clouds and it is just accepted as part of their reality. The film feels aligned with documentarian work like Lance Oppenheim, whose work I have been largely antagonistic to because of the grotesque look, obvious construction of scenes, and disdain for humanity. Frogtown subsides all of those issues with naturalistic photography (actually using shallow focal depth for good!), subverting the hell out of any contrivances, and letting people breathe.
At times, the camera gets distracted as it finds tangential characters that occupy space within the frame. There is one scene in particular that shines a light on how the mundane becomes engrossing. As one child is being prompted with the question, “When do you think it’ll feel like you’re an adult?” her sibling swims across the pool in the background of the frame, holding a box of Sour Patch Kids in the air as if they are the only thing worth living for. The camera follows him instead of sticking on the actual interview subject. Childhood is finding joy in the fact that your candy did not get wet despite you swimming with it. Those small moments inject so much life into the film. Despite how it sneaks in its narrative construction, the film is alive because it so expertly blends in the mundane. Bureaucratic channels, bigfoot-focused youtubers tell the audience about their plan to get more subscribers, and homeowners called on by the lord to own a goat farm in their backyard all feel authentic whether they actually are or not.
The central story following Kathleen’s family initially just feels like the glue needed to make this pseudo-documentary into a feature length film, but their story evolves to become about three generations of people clearly raised differently and forced to reckon with reality at different rates. Youthful imagination exists for as long as it is allowed. Those clouds can be dragons as long as those creative juices are allowed to flow. The Frog King functions as a metaphor for belief systems but especially those mythological figures that are staples for children. Whether he exists or not is of little consequence. What does matter is believing is the power of cinema and the suspension of disbelief. A damn good film like Frogtown can do that.
Screened at the Florida Film Festival.
