Wednesday, June 12, 2024

She Loved Blossoms More (2024) Tribeca 2024


Three brothers attempt to build a time machine in order to bring their dead mother back and up opening a rift to another dimension.

This is a great looking film where the form and look over whelms the content. It's a throwback to the off kilter Ero- horror/scifi films of the 1970's or more recent homages like BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW. It's a film that is flawed and doesn't hang together but remains watchable because the bits are intriguing (I mean an inter-dimensional chicken and a time machine in a wardrobe?)

I'm not going to lie I'm really torn about this film. I know why the film was programmed at Tribeca and I know why it will find an audience and be a festival favorite (the images and pieces are magnificent) but the film is very often a mess. 

The tone, which is of a dry comedy, doesn't work. Its humor is of the sort where we recognize something is funny but we don't actually laugh. It's inclusion lessens what should be a disturbing series of events. (David Cronenberg did some of this better in THE FLY) 

There is sex and drugs because there are sex and drugs not because they actually add much to the film.  

While I don't expect logic and reason in a film like this, there really isn't even an attempt at it. I kept wanting to ask why about plot turns because I was never fully invested.

I think a large part of the reason I never engaged with anything beyond the visuals is that the choice was made to have the brothers underplay things. There is no emotion, or range and it kind of feels like they are walking through this. Its a choice that makes them seem like they don't really care about anything other than having sex with the girl - and even then they so under play they make the sex and drugs boring.

On the other hand the weird visuals (see above) and the occasional odd turn kept me watching when I wanted to bail early on. I wanted to see how the image reproduced above played into the story.

While occasionally delighted, I was mostly disappointed. I was hoping for a film I could rewatch as a whole instead of one where I only will revisit  via photos or clips of various moments

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