She Loved Blossoms More could be a nice start to spooky season for anyone who’s willing to indulge something truly weird, wild, and unpredictable. Despite its fatally sagging second act, its concept, execution, and ending are enough for me to give it a mild recommendation for any fans of international, arthouse, and/or underground horror, such as myself.
The second feature by new Greek horror auteur Yannis Veslemes, Blossoms follows three brothers as they attempt to build a time machine to bring back their late mother. This is all that their days consist of, apart from getting high, sleeping in, and watching television. Their lifestyle and project are funded by Logo (Dominique Pinon), their grieving father who visits occasionally, but who only becomes more important to the story as time goes on.
The camp here is intentionally turned up to eleven, with multicolored light streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows, strobe effects (steer clear of this one if you’re at all prone to seizures from flashing lights), and the time machine itself looking like a posh English phone booth from the 1920s. These arch qualities are even reflected in the brothers’ names: Hedgehog (Panos Papadopoulos), Dummy (Julio Katsis), and Japan (Aris Balis). I assume these are nicknames, but even their father calls them by these names, so we can essentially throw out all the rules here.
Not only is the style weird, but the real star of the movie is the weirdest and most wonderful of all. The boys’ friend Samantha (Sandra Abuelghanam), along with animal test subjects and other human beings later on, have complications from having gone through the time machine, which are unforgettably illustrated by several animatronics. If you’ve happened to see the poster or any marketing for the film, you might have seen the very best of these, which is Samantha’s head opened up like a flower to reveal this plant-like eye blossom thing. This comes fairly early on in the film, and it’s been used so heavily in the marketing (and wisely so) that I don’t really consider it to be a spoiler. Hell, it’s a tremendous hook, but the flip side is that the movie doesn’t have that much to offer outside of these animatronics.
Veslemes has an excellent premise here, and he knows how to execute his tentpole moments effectively. The problem is that the tentpoles are all this movie has. There’s an entertaining deadpan quality to the way the brothers interact, sometimes approaching a Wes Anderson style, but Blossoms — while clocking in at a brisk 86 minutes — moves at such a leaden pace that you have to strain to pick up the strains of something like The Darjeeling Limited. In other words, there is no meat in the middle of this sandwich. The bread of the premise, the animatronics, and the wild ending is some of the best bread you may have ever tasted, but who wants a sandwich of only bread? The style could have and should have made for more substance here, but there are levels to style, and Blossoms only has one level. | George Napper
In French and Greek with English subtitles
