L'homme aux fleurs

In my language, there's a different word for erotic and non-erotic love. English has just one word for the two. And Charles, the main character in this story, doesn't even make a distinction. The attraction he feels to flowers or classical music is erotic, as is his attachment to his mother; at the same time, he's unable to consummate a sexual relationship. He's a profoundly lonely person, who writes letters to himself and buys 'human relationships' in the form of a doctor or a stripper to whom he hardly talks. Lisa, in turn, is just as lonely: her boyfriend hardly talks to her, only takes her money to spend on drugs. This film is about the isolation of modern people, the impossibility to create relationships. Charles sublimates this longing into a fondness for all art and beauty, others escape into drugs or pointless 'creation'. And the question arises: why am I watching this film? What am I substituting with it?

In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce pokes a little fun at Stephen Daedelus' aesthetics. Daedelus says there are two extremes in art--the kinetic and the static. Static art is beauty of the mind, or Apollonian beauty. Kinetic is more akin to sexual desire, or Dionysian beauty. Though Joyce found this theory to be rife for satire, albeit gentle satire, I think the distinction is compelling.

This film is in part about this distinction, or rather the absence of it in one man. For Charles Bremer, all beauty is erotic. For some reason, emotional or physical, he can't participate in the act of love, so he sublimates it into art. For him, seeing a beautiful painting or a beautiful woman undressing are two instances of the same thing, both equally erotic and equally profound.

All this babble makes the film sound pretentious, but in practice it is actually almost completely unpretentious. It has something profound to say, but it says it very simply. If there is a little bit of Charles in you, you will understand this film implicitly. If there isn't, then nothing will help you, because all of the great things the film has to say are unspoken. All is said with mood and characterization. The music, largely from Lucia di Lammermoor, is put to probably the best use that any music in any film ever has been. The 16mm flash backs with Werner Herzog (yes, THE Werner Herzog) playing Charles' father are brilliant and beautifully balletic, as if they had been choreographed gesture by gesture by the director.

The day I saw Man of Flowers in the theater, I walked out into the sunlight and looked at the world a little differently. That was in 1984, when I was 17 years old. And I'm still moved by the experience.

A wonderful slow, gentle film, full of strange characters. I loved the eccentricities of all the characters; the mad painter, the crazy psychiatrist, the main character, Charles, who is obsessed by flowers. Even the postman who delivers the letters Charles sends to himself every day is delightful. The characters are surrounded by wonderful images and the background music is absolutely divine. The rather freudian storyline follows the relationships between Charles, a rich eccentric artist, a young woman he pays to strip for him and her violent boyfriend. I liked the strength of Charles's character despite his gentleness, which leads to a good twist at the end. I loved it.

Charles Bremer, an elderly man, is a little eccentric. His love for flowers is only equaled by his love for watching a pretty woman undress. He lives on his own, plays the organ in church and tends to stick to himself. Things don't go really fast for him, until the drug addicted boyfriend of the girl he pays to strip for him turns violent.

Nudity, classical music, long slow scenes with a lot of colors, emotional darkness. That'd be the general description of the film in a few words. It'd be a great injustice to this little film though. The story is played out amazingly well, with a very acceptable explanation of the Man of Flowers, and why he is who he is and all.

The choice of musical overdub in this film, sometimes blotting out everything that is happening completely, reminded me a bit of A Clockwork Orange, although that film is almost entirely unlike this one. It works out very well though, pushing the accentuation in just the right direction when that is needed. Clearly a well done case of film-making.

8 out of 10 flowers in the air

It's no surprise, you'll find Man Of Flowers one of the oddest films you've ever see. A rich lonely man, Norman Kaye, fantastic as, loves arty things. He plays piano, studies flowers, art, pays to watch beautiful young women like Alyson Best disrobe, in the opening scene. Not there's nothing wrong with the latter, although I wouldn't pay a hundred smackaroos. But in our Charles Bremmer, is an underlying picture of a lonely and mentally sick man. He posts letters to his dead mother. His psychiatrist isn't any help either, telling Charles he's doing the same thing as well as informing him that the rates are going up. One thing Charles has a lot of, is money. The scene with his shrink is my favorite among a few others. He forms a friendship with Best, that borders on a sexual one. Best though too has a lesbian lover, in one frank scene of nudity, one thing this film doesn't hold back on. Another scene, a droll timeless one, involves Kaye, in the raw, standing up in a spa bath, telling a doctor on the phone, his problems, like how he loves to smell his studies flowers, and wait till you hear how he replies. Just another guy that doesn't understand our poor Charles and his predictament. Best has an abusive ex boyfriend (Haywood-good as always) a struggling artist, who lives in the studio in the city. One scene sees him having an argument with a client on the phone, while nibbling on a yo yo biscuit, is another treasured scene. Haywood, one of Aussie's great actors is great at portraying anger, it had me rewatching the scene a few times as other ones. When Best moves in with Charles she invites her lesbian lover over, where Charles explains a exercise they must do, where Charles starts by quoting, "I've been told by doctors in the higher field". He even gets a pool installed, tent and all, I found intriguing. I really wanted Best to end up with Charles, but the end just reminds us lonely folk, as we stand apart from our other lonely peers while looking out to sea, loneliness can sometimes to be an inevitably, especially if we're not willing to do anything about it, or keep turning people away. The scenes that really got up my goat, I had to fast forward, were flashbacks played against operatic music. But they're not all bad. One shows Charles as a kid outside with a slingslot, breaking one of the front windows, where the father comes running out after him. Another of the weird scenes has Charles having quite a peculiar conversation with you're not ordinary mailman, who prewarns him about the consequences of not paying gas bills. A lot of scenes in this film are odd, as it's other characters, that are not of the regular norm, but they're funny. Another odd scene, is when he's sketching a nude artist-guess who? His teacher-Julia Blake, goes off at him, as he's drawing flowers instead. What's this preoccupation with flowers? Man Of Flowers is odd, but with it's oddness, is it's originality that I liked. This one deserves it's place up against Bliss, though it's not gonna appeal to all tastes. It's one of the most uniquely beautiful and oddest Aussie films you'll see, with great performances to boot.