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.
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.