The Extraordinary Miss Flower review – secret life exposed through treasure trove of love letters
The letters inspired a 2024 album by Icelandic singer-songwriter Emilíana Torrini (called Miss Flower) and also this intriguing, gorgeous and creative documentary – a film somewhere between an installation with songs and an extended music promo. It features Torrini and her band performing songs from the album, some dramatised scenes (actor Caroline Catz plays Flower), plus a bit of modern dance. This description makes it sound like art school navel gazing, but while it can be mildly frustrating, The Extraordinary Miss Flower is a real pleasure: luxuriant like a good glass of red wine. Partly that's down to the songs, vivacious pop-electronica numbers sung with seductive intimacy by Torrini, who is pretty extraordinary herself.
What we do find out about Flower is that she had a conventional upbringing in Australia, then swanned off to London where she worked as a secretary at the Telegraph, picking up bits of journalism. An adventurer by nature, she travelled widely – and men were obsessed, reduced to slushy puddles by the dozen. Plenty of them wrote letters too, read here by Cave and others, including actor Richard Ayoade. Flower herself remains elusive – which is the point, perhaps, since the perspective here is mostly lovers' projections written on a delirious high, reconstructed from the letters. Some lines are romantic, others hilariously awful: 'I am in withdrawal from you like a Prague junkie.' Poor guy.
The Extraordinary Miss Flower is in UK and Irish cinemas from 9 May
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It would manifest itself in strange ways: I remember going into a department store to buy some socks, and I was unable to approach the salesperson because it was far too complicated for me. It sounds pathetic.' No, it doesn't. It sounds like someone very sick. 'Yeah. I guess I might have seen a shrink, but I was in the middle of the stream swimming and just trying to keep my head above water.' The rage, he says, could make him difficult to be around. 'I tried to be nice. I tried to be humble, but there were times when I would explode. That could come out if I was near people, or even if I was quite alone. It happened a few times when I was alone in the wilderness, fishing, and I'd just go off into a rage about my gear.' I tell him it sounds as though, more than anything else, he needed someone to take care of him. He had been, in effect, chief executive of a multinational company before he was 25, and had been working since childhood. 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I continued to work on Proud Mary that way and I ended up in a place I felt very good about. 'My wife told me she'd been watching me from the control room, and she said she could see it in my face that I actually was making myself go back, so I continued to work that way with the rest of the songs. I'm just an adventurer, you know, like an explorer coming back to the homeland.' It's an oddity that Fogerty's legacy rests on songs written in such a short span of time. Only two of his solo albums (Centerfield and 1997's Blue Moon Swamp) come within spitting distance of Creedence. It's terrifying, too, that a song such as Fortunate Son – about how the sons of wealth avoid fighting the wars their fathers profit from – remains relevant, especially now the US is governed by one of those fortunate sons. 'I wrote that song during the administration of Richard Nixon. Now Donald Trump is almost a direct descendant, skipping the years since 1974. 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I prefer being really happy, very settled, completely in love with my wife, Julie, having raised great kids. It's a sense of being that's irreplaceable.' Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years is released 22 August on Concord
