The Extraordinary Miss Flower
Performance films are not for everyone. Whether they capture contemporary productions, or repackage archive material in a new way, audiences usually gravitate towards them when the subject is an artist they already admire. But there's no need to be a fan of Icelandic singer-songwriter Emilíana Torrini – arguably best known for 'Gollum's Song' from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – to enjoy The Extraordinary Miss Flower.
Artists and filmmakers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard won awards and accolades for their inspired and unconventional 2014 film about Nick Cave, 20,000 Days on Earth, followed by the equally vivid Who is Gil Scott-Heron? (2015). With their new film, unshackled from the tropes of musical biography, their creative freedom is able to truly take flight, resulting in a delight for the senses that is both deeply intimate and thrillingly cinematic.
The film takes its inspiration from the suite of songs on Torrini's 2024 album Miss Flower, inspired in turn by a collection of passionate and romantic love letters sent to a friend's mother, Geraldine Flower, in the 1960s and 1970s, and discovered after her death. For the film, Forsyth and Pollard combine Torrini's performances of the songs – seductively sung directly to camera for maximum intimacy – with multimedia images, selective readings from the letters, and a playful portrayal of Flower herself by actress Caroline Catz.
Thousands of words become a deeply moving picture
In less capable hands, such ripe ingredients could easily turned into a hot mess, but from the opening moments it is clear that The Extraordinary Miss Flower is the work of two artists utterly in command of their vision, and fully trusted and embraced by their collaborators.
What ultimately coalesces from this collection of disparate elements is more the sum of its parts. For not only does The Extraordinary Miss Flower conjure the mysterious lost loves of an elusive woman – as delightful as her interpretation of Miss Flower may be, Catz is used sparingly so as not to overshadow or demystify the original – it evokes a pre-digital age when, even if long-distance telephone calls were not prohibitively expensive, a letter was often the best way to express one's erotic desires and romantic yearnings.
'Letters open people up like nothing else really does,' Torrini explains, and the film proves her point admirably. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but Forsyth and Pollard have turned thousands of words into a deeply moving picture.
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