Movie review: ‘Flowers’ at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Spain’s official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, Flowers is the first movie submitted in the Basque language, a beautiful tongue unrelated to Spanish, and of uncertain linguistic origin.

But there is more that is strange and lovely about this film. Centering on a mysterious regular delivery of flowers to a woman named Ane (Nagore Aranburu) by an anonymous person who may or may not be a co-worker she barely knows (Josean Bengoetxea), the film at times has an air of magical realism.

A sheep appears, twice, initially leading to the co-worker’s accidental death, and then years later, to an implausible-sounding but utterly believable meeting between Ane — who has since become obsessed with the dead man, Beñat — and his widow (Itziar Ituño).

What sense can be made of this? Plenty.

The film is a poetic meditation on love, pain and memory, all expressed through the metaphor of cut flowers. In a conversation shown in flashback, Beñat tells Ane that she has to trim the ends of a bouquet before putting them in water.

“The cut needs to stay open?” Ane asks. Yes, Beñat tells her: “If you want it to last longer.”

Nothing terribly much happens in Flowers but the passage of time. Over the course of five years, Beñat’s mother (Itziar Aizpuru) sinks into dementia; Ane comes to her senses; and Beñat is slowly forgotten.

Yet the movie, for all its uneventfulness, is intensely memorable.

In Basque with English subtitles

Exclusive: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

This story was originally published January 6, 2016 at 11:11 AM with the headline "Movie review: ‘Flowers’ at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth."