La Flor (2018) User Reviews (9)

Yes, it's pretty good

[Jalow547 · 8/10 · 19 June 2020]

I read about this movie in a film magazine and I was intrigued. It runs more than thirteen hours and takes the form of six separate films that play one after the other, with the only common thread being the four lead actresses, who appear as different characters in each of the segments. It sounded like it could be very pretentious and overly artistic and everything like that, but it also sounded interesting and different enough that I had to check it out.

It was a while before I was able to see it, and I found myself wondering about it. Why spend ten years making a film that is really six films? Why not release each film separately. But it turns out that really is the genius of it. The six films only work because they're combined. Four of them don't even have an ending. On their own, they're nothing special. So the director really succeeded in his attempt to try something new, to combine different story elements in this unique way. He created six episodes that play one after another, and he even appears in the film himself to introduce it at the beginning, then twice more between some of the segments. And it all works! People must have told him he was crazy, but he pulled it off.

What ends up happening for the viewer is that instead of watching six films, we really are watching one film about four women. These four women, the actresses who appear throughout, are in a way playing actresses, maybe playing themselves ever, who appear in different stories for our enjoyment. We don't end up caring if a story has no end, because at that point we're just excited to see where they will take us next. It really is very clever. The stories are enjoyable in themselves, but we only end up caring about them exactly as much as we should. That's a good thing. We don't care if someone dies, because we know everyone will return safe and sound in the next episode.

And the stories are very interesting. They're funny and they're tense and they're serious and they're sad. And there were countless moments and scenes that felt totally original, like nothing I'd ever seen in any film before. That is rare these days, yet this guy pulls it off again and again. The length may be a big turnoff for a lot of people, but think of it like a miniseries. You're not going to watch it all at once. The DVD is actually four DVDs, and each of those is divided into two acts, so there are 8 acts total. The first two acts line up with the first two episodes, while the third episode takes up the next three acts and the fourth episode takes up two more acts of its own. The final act consists of the final two episodes, which play more like short films. You'll watch it over 8 nights, or 4 nights, or however long it takes. Maybe you'll take a night off between episodes, and it'll be there waiting for you when you come back. It's a slow movie at times, but not tedious. It wasn't for me, anyway. It was very entertaining and I always looked forward to seeing what was next.

One thing I enjoyed was the fact that the stories were not rushed. I've seen films that were longer than they needed to be and some that were shorter. Here, the pacing is perfect. It's a long film, but not a slow film. It's slow at times, but only when it needs to be. The two longest segments also happened to be the two best. Both were very different, but they had a lot of flashbacks and wandering narratives that took as all over the place until we didn't know what to expect. But I will say that the film is very artistic in every way, both good and bad. There is a complete Kill Bill (volumes 1 and 2) in there, and a silent film that comes with nearly all the frustrations of a silent film, although it somehow still feels welcome when it arrives. It's not a perfect film, but it is a very fun experiment. The director, it seems, took a big risk in making it and he succeeded. He had a vision and he saw it through and now we have this wonderful film to enjoy. If more filmmakers would follow this example then we would have a bigger variety of films instead of the same old garbage year after year, sequel after sequel, every movie being exactly the same.

New fiction for a fictionless world.

[avhensley · 9/10 · 12 August 2020]

Ingmar Bergman's 1966 Film Persona is generally considered a "Mount Everest" of film.

For me, personally, this is my Mount Everest. My own proverbial Moby Dick.

La Flor is a fourteen hour opus. An opus to cinema. The history of cinema. The history of storytelling with the medium itself. And a love letter to fiction as a whole. It is quite literally, a whale of a tale. A killer whale even.

Directed by Mariano Lilnas, I would advise that viewer becomes acquainted with some of the history of this film. The origin story, if you will, is of our director/writer/actor, Mariano Lilnas, attending a widely unknown play titled Neblina or the Fog in English. What our young star did not know at the time, is that this would directly inspiration for La Flor.

For those who do not know, La Flor is not just a single film. La Flor is something of an anthology film. Divided into six parts, this piece of art tackles fiction in different ways. In one film might feature a horror B movie that is somewhat reminiscent of the old B movies that Mystery Science Theater 3000 would mock but the next might be an intense romance film of music superstars with a drug sub story to round out the side characters and the B plot. The cinematic style is as fluid as the topics. The script itself is either something that would've screenplay guru, Blake Snyder, nodding in approval of OR something that would've had him pulling his hair and screaming out of the theater in repulsion.

Back to our origin story, our star crossed director became enamored the night of Neblina. Not because of the play itself. But because of our lead actresses. Four in total, Elisa Carricajo, Valeria Correa, Pilar Gamboa, and Laura Paredes would become the stars of the film. Across every film (except one) these four actresses play the lead roles of the film and more or less hold this Moby Dick of a movie together. Our enamored Director fell in love this night. But he fell in love with the four different women at the same time.

I cannot say what is the nature of this love. Whether it was an artist/muse relationship. Whether it was romantic. Whether it was the same love he felt for all of them. All I can say is, in the end, Lilnas did marry Laura Paredes. But I can't help but feel there is an element of platonic love he has for all of them. Within his interview for Cinemascope he talked about the state of fiction in the early 2000s. Reality TV was everywhere. People are constantly wanting to know about the latest installment in the life of a Kardashian, or a mother who birthed eight kids. Fake game shows began to give us, the viewer, power over a television series and the contestants lives. Documentary and Fiction began to merge in a powerfully vapid way. The "great" shows of the past such as Twin Peaks, Sopranos, and West WIng began to fizzle out as the new age of dramatic TV series (Breaking Bad, Mad Men) wouldn't be seen in a handful of years. Mariano Lilnas talked to his new loves and the conversation of a film adaptation of Neblina was born. Our director said yes, despite his heart not being in the play itself, because he wanted to work with these women.

What Lilnas sought was to explore the essence of fiction with these women. As time went on, he convinced these girls to tag along with him to follow this crazy idea of exploring fiction with themselves as the "face" of fiction, so to speak. Then ten years passed by. A decade in the making to produce this artistic exploration into fiction. Never have a set of actresses come from such obscurity to a complete repertoire of acting performances in such on feature. In many ways, this is a filmography of the four lead actresses itself. Legendary director Jean-Luc Godard once said that a film is a documentary of the actresses. This is true for La Flor. We see these women age slowly. Beginning from an early twenties to scraping the early forties.

Before I talk about the films individually, I would like to talk about the jpeg you see of La Flor on IMDB. That rendition of a flower is the entire movie. For a detailed explanation, youtube the trailer for this film or just watch the first two minutes of it on MUBI. Lilnas, himself, will explain. But for brevity sake, the four "petals" of the top of the flower are indicative of the four women in someways. Whether or not the stories themselves are symbolic of the actresses is up to the viewer. But like in basic geometry, there is arrows on the end of these lines. This indicates that the line continues. The story goes on. The movie doesn't end. And it quite literally doesn't. The movie will just stop and you go on to the next film. the Circle you see in the center of the flower is the only complete movie. It is a remake of a Jean Renoir's unfinished film A Day in the Country (a metajoke if there ever was one). The stem starts in the middle and has a conclusion, but it has no beginning. It begins almost unannounced and leaves in an unforgettable manner.

In the end, fiction doesn't ever really end.

Even in the modern day, where one can expect another twenty instalments of another billion dollar franchise. Fiction doesn't end where the princess is saved. Fiction doesn't end where the lesson learned is reiterated. Fiction is this ever permeating thing, that sinks into our reality and mixes with our nonfiction. Fiction is in our minds. Fiction is in our imagination. Fiction is the stuff of little kids. Fiction is something we are taught to grow out. Fiction is something society says we should replace with a "truth." But fiction can't be replaced. That is because we are all fictional, in some extent. Some part of us, is always made up. Whether that's a lie about ourselves. Our it is a love of a person who doesn't exist.

Fiction doesn't end, because we are all fiction.

One of the most interesting things i've ever seen

[amparocabal-07416 · 10/10 · 10 May 2020]

The six stories contained in this film are diferently attractive, full of suspense but also laughs, greatly filmed. It's a risky but greatly structured film. The performances are superb.

This is film making at its best, a world champion of cinematography

[marc_wittmann · 10/10 · 24 August 2021]

Rainer Maria Fassbinder in the 1980ies, Wong Kar-Wai in the 1990ies, Paolo Sorrentino at present, Mariano Llinás is on a par with those film makers. This is what cinematography is all about: pure emotions in artistic depiction with narrative grandeur. This film is a drug.

Pointless, pretentious and boring

[FrenchEddieFelson · 2/10 · 10 April 2019]

Ô miracle, I managed to see the four opuses. Superb exercise of obstinacy, perseverance and self-denial, because, frankly, I severely fought against boredom and even sleep.

Pros: the four main actresses Elisa Carricajo, Valeria Correa, Pilar Gamboa and Laura Paredes are remarkable. With a special mention for the scene during which Pilar Gamboa is of an incredible verbal violence, on the phone, summoning the distant interlocutor to choose sides. She really scared me! And Elisa Carricajo is irresistibly gorgeous.

Cons: this movie is a huge labyrinth and, when stuck in a dead end, you are teleported to another place, without understanding how or why. I was naively hoping that the fourth and final opus would complete the three previous ones and then offer a global picture for this endless work. In vain! What is the interest of this film for a viewer? Especially the last opus which is the worst of all. I objectively admit that some scenes are worthy of interest, about 40/60 minutes versus a vertiginous total of 800! About 5% of the film approximately ...

A posteriori, I did not understand at all the short speech of the director Mariano Llinás who tries to explain, at the beginning of the first opus, the choice of the name La Flor and the drawing on the poster which would be closely related to the structure of the film itself, theoretically speaking. Honestly, why a flower? Why not consider a dog with 5 legs, 1/2 tail and 1 head, or an ice cream with 6 scoops of 6 distinct flavors and whipped cream, or quite simply an empty poster? Mariano Llinás seriously needs to stop smoking hash and hiding himself behind a facade of a two-penny poet. This film was even presented at the festival of Biarritz (south of France) dedicated to Latin America, in competition with the masterpiece La noche de 12 años (2018) and the excellent Pájaros de verano (2018). The Biarrots should definitely learn to sorting out the wheat from the chavs. Anyway, if you are an insomniac and are looking for a sleeping pill, La Flor is the solution, even if it's hardly swallow-able.

Pretentious mishmash

[hof-4 · 4/10 · 5 February 2021]

The movie is available for streaming in four parts, each over three hours long. In the first scene, director Mariano Llinás states: the film comprises six stories, four without an ending, one without a beginning and one with both. Four actresses, Elisa Carricajo, Valeria Correa, Pilar Gamboa and Laura Paredes star in all stories (except one). The title La Flor (The Flower) comes from a diagram the director sketches on a notepad.

Story 1 (Part 1, minutes 4 to 83: 79 minutes). By the director's claim this is an homage to an American B-movie which, he says, "Americans used to do with their eyes closed but they cannot do any more." The subject (malignant mummy) certainly fits the description. There are a few amusing scenes that will induce déjà vu in Argentinians. There is actually an end of sorts, mercifully a joke.

Story 2 (Part 1, minutes 83 to 222: 139 minutes). Defined as a musical. In fact, it evokes the feeling of the various versions of A Star is Born. A couple undergoing a bitter breakup need to reunite to write and record a new album; their separate records were not hits. Midway through, a mutual friend of the couple is found to have strange associations and the movie switches to the mad scientist(s) genre.

Story 3 (Part 2, minutes 0 to 205 and Part 3, minutes 0 to 126: 331 minutes). A riff on spy movies. Three (actually four) attractive women spies with a male handler, the women sleekly dressed in black, waving guns around and dispensing karate kicks obviously evoke Charlie's Angels and in fact much of the movie (like the first scene) is of comic strip or old TV series level. Action in many countries with an omniscient narrator pontificating endlessly. There is some material on what makes a person become a spy, but it is drowned in a five hour torrent. The ending which is not an ending seeks to evoke a Leone - Morricone western.

Story 4 (Part 3, minutes 130 to 216 and Part 4, minutes 2 to 105: 189 minutes). We see Llinás and his crew as they film the segment we are watching. The director becomes obsessed with filming lapacho trees. Evidence of a Lovecraftian tree uprising mounts and director and crew have a confrontation with a tree that drives them all mad. A psychologist/investigator is sent to find out what happened. This story is perhaps the funniest, with much self-parody. The screen director is obsessive about silly details, unable to communicate clearly, disdainful of scripts and organization in general and has a love/abuse relationship with his four actresses. Unfortunately, the story eventually explodes into incoherence involving old books, Arthur Machen, demonic cults and Casanova.

After the end of Story 4 we come back to the scenario at the beginning; a picnic table in a grove of trees near a steel pipe structure. The director informs: we are about to see Story 5, a silent parody of (or homage to) Renoir's Partie de Campagne and Story 6 called The Captive.

Story 5 (Part 4, minutes 110 to 157: 47 minutes). The parody/homage consists of black & white soundless scenes approaching or duplicating Renoir's, adapted to the Argentine countryside and to contemporary dress. Near the end we see a stirring exhibition of aerobatics and we hear snatches of Renoir's dialogue and music from the original.

Story 6 (Part 4, minutes 157 to 183: 26 minutes). Old books again; this time Remembrances of a Captive Englishwoman in the Plains of South America (1900, in Spanish) by Sarah S. Evans. It narrates the escape of Evans and another three women from captivity in Indian territory. This part alternates titles (photographed from the book) with blurry, saturated, almost static scenes.

End titles (Part 4, minutes 181 to 220: 39 minutes). Titles are projected over an upside down shot of the crew cleaning up. Image turns right side up at minute 207.

Obviously, there have to be reasons to watch a 13+ hour movie. I don't see any. The words that a viewing evokes are: hubris, pretentiousness, digression, lack of focus, intellectual posing and last but not least pulling the viewer's leg. The director does not lack cute ideas, but seems to be unable to separate cute/good from cute/bad. Some stories (#6) are plain bad and others (#3) are absurdly inflated. Boredom creeps everywhere. Perhaps the best stories (#1, first half of #4, #5) are worth watching and, after radical cutting could make a witty two hour parody in early Woody Allen style. As it is, the movie is a miss.

This review will be in six parts.

[whatithinkis · 1/10 · 30 October 2021]

Each part is a different genre, howEVER, even though each one is a different genre, they all have one thing in common: there is nothing in each of the six parts.

This is very boring

[perfectdark1 · 4/10 · 9 July 2020]

Now I understand why most of the reviews only review the idea of this. Having multiple movies connected together, but non really review the movies themselves. Why? Because they are uterly boring as hell. Not really an intriguing story and I think this could all be combined into a few hours, instead there are these long scenes of nothing and boring discussions.

This Is Not One Single Film

[nammage · 1/10 · 20 October 2021]

I've seen long films. Actual films that had one main plot, several subplots, but were all coherently sound and complimented the main plot. This is six films strung together with cheap tape and called one film. If it was a single film, the director wouldn't constantly interrupt it to tell the viewer the next film to be showed. He wouldn't have had it edited to be split into several parts in creation of several films (which this is.) The director basically produced six films, called it one film and got people at festivals to watch it all in one day.

Prankster troll. That's the only thing about this that makes sense. I gave this a 1/10 'cause if rating it, one can only give it a 1/10 or a 10/10 and not because it is either of those ratings but because you can't really rate six films as one single film that actually does not connect to each other other than the same four actresses are the main characters in each of them. If the stories actually connected to each other, than yeah...sure, you could give it an honest rating but none of them do so it gets a 1/10 or a 10/10; not that it's deserving of either.

The audience is being punked by watching this as one film when obviously it's six separate films; the director implies this by his very presence throughout. That's why I'm giving it 1/10; and while I did watch all six films, I've seen enough films/tv (47,000+ ratings here) to know when I'm being had.