On "La Flor"
This 14-hour epic from El Pampero Cine is a coup de cinema. It's also very watchable
La Flor (2018)
Written and directed by Mariano Llinás
This is less a review of “La Flor,” the enormous 2018 masterwork from Argentina’s El Pampero Cine collective, than a description and an appreciation. I can’t review a 14-hour movie because I can’t get my head around it. By the time you’re in hour 11 you might have temporarily forgotten that hours 2-3 feature a series of pop songs. The third “episode” of the film constitutes a “spy movie” that is almost four hours long by itself. There’s just no way to responsibly judge it as a single work.
That said, I believe the film is very watchable, mixing pastoral sequences with comedy, melodrama with a sharp sense of character, laconic action and violence with satire. I was drawn in by the settings, the pacing, and the performances. It is, with occasional and quite understandable lapses, pretty great.
“La Flor” is a wooly, lengthy (yes, 14 hours) film consisting of six episodes, each of which features the same four actresses (Elisa Carricajo, Larura Paredes, Valeria Correa, and Pilar Gamboa). It was written and directed by Mariano Llinás, the founder of El Pampero Cine — a revolutionary filmmakers’ collective in Argentina which stresses collaboration and constant shooting and production, while rejecting, as much as possible, funding from government institutions and meddling investors.
The film was shot over a ten-year period. You read that right. El Pampero stresses constant shooting. One of its directors, Laura Citarella, said in an interview that instead of spending the lion’s share of their time planning, writing, and raising money, El Pampero filmmakers shoot film. They’ll shoot scenes for a day or a week or two; then they’ll change roles and, often drawing from a common pool of actors and collaborators, shoot for a week on a different film. Perhaps the director of one movie becomes the sound man on another, or the cinematographer in one has an acting role in the next.
You might have heard of El Pampero Cine when the 2022 film “Trenque Lauquen”1 by another of its members, Laura Citarella, won a great deal of international critical notice, including selection by Cahiers du Cinema as the movie of the year. That may have been the occasion for El Pampero to become more well known, but they’ve been making movies for over twenty years.
The six episodes of “La Flor” are described at the beginning of the movie in a voice-over by director Llinás, who appears from time to time as a guide through the forest of narrative that the film encompasses. He describes the structure like this:
There are six stories. Four of them have a beginning but not an ending. That is to say, they stop in the middle. They have no ending. Then there is episode five, which like a short story with a beginning and an end. Finally, there is episode six, which begins in the middle and ends the film.
Each episode has a genre, so to speak. The first episode could be regarded as a B-movie, the kind that Americans used to shoot with their eyes closed and now just can't shoot anymore. The second episode is a sort of musical with a touch of mystery. The third episode is a spy movie. The fourth episode is difficult to describe. The fifth one is inspired by an old French film. The last one is about some captive women in the 19th century who returned from the desert, from the Indians, after many years.
Now, the punchline of the whole movie lies in the fact that all the episodes star the same four women in different roles. I'd say the movie is about them -- and somehow for them.
The episodes are of differing lengths. Episode 1, the “B-movie,” concerns some anthropologists who have dug up a mummy; it will surprise no one when the corpse’s ghost possesses a lab assistant. This supernatural horror movie clocks in at a relatively tidy one hour and twenty minutes. The other parts are longer, with Episode 3, the “spy movie,” lasting more than four hours alone.
So much for a description of “La Flor” and its structure. As Llinás says, the point of the movie — or one objective, at least — is to feature the same four women in roles in each of the episodes. Seeing them change roles and personalities is certainly part of the pleasure of watching the film. For those who have seen “Trenque Lauquen” or other New Argentine Cinema films from the last twenty years — movies stretching from the low-budget Shakespeare-influenced films of Matías Piñeiro (three of which are streaming on Metrograph beginning this month2) to big productions like “Argentina 1985”3 and “The Delinquents”4 — you’ll recognize these and other actors appearing in film after film. In fact, these actresses comprise their own theater company, Piel de Lava5, in Buenos Aires. So the films made by El Pampero, as well as others that draw from the same casting pool, are a real gateway into the culture of Argentina, for those who are interested.
But “La Flor” has a much larger point or objective: to celebrate the sheer pleasure of narrative. In an interview upon the April 2018 release of the film, Llinás says:
It doesn’t promise certainties, it doesn’t promise fables or endings that say anything. Simply something that seems lost: the pleasure of narrative material, musicality, images. Something of all that playfulness that seems to have vanished in cinema. I sometimes get the impression, seeing certain forms of impatience in films, that spectators and critics have lost the excitement of great adventures. It seems that they are not moved by the adventure of having made a great film. They are comfortable spectators, who prefer the experience of a film like an all-inclusive hotel instead of enjoying the taste of surprise.
It’s a great interview, very informative. If you don’t read Spanish, a machine translation does a passable job.6 It’s worth the effort.
What’s it like to watch “La Flor”? First of all, it wasn’t intended to be seen all at once. An article in the Argentine publication La Nación7 states that it was shown in Buenos Aires in three parts, “ideally projected on three consecutive nights.” (In fact, another interview with Llinás in September 20208 — deep into the pandemic — says that after its premiere in Buenos Aires at a film festival, “La Flor” was not shown again, at least not up to that date.)
The article goes on:
Going to see La flor is a unique film event, like a party shared by the spectators, whose faces are almost always the same on the first, second and third day of exhibition and, without looking for it, they forge a small community that lives together — interacts, shares mates and, trying not to be noticed, checks their cell phones -- during a weekend of total immersion in the stories that go from Russia to the deepest Buenos Aires, and from the Colombian jungle to Berlin.
Needless to say, the preferred way to watch a movie like “La Flor” — or any great film — is in a theater. But when COVID shut down moviegoing two years later, Llinás released the film on a streaming platform, and for months in Buenos Aires it was common for people to ask each other “Where are you in ‘La Flor’?”9
But outside film festivals or, perhaps, screenings in a town like Austin or Los Angeles where there are film schools, online streaming may be the only way you can see it. And it won’t be available on Metrograph forever, so I advise you to sign up for the service and watch this film — as well as the three other Argentinean movies by Matías Piñeiro I mentioned. (See footnote 2.)
On Metrograph, the film is available in what I can only assume are the same three parts or “episodes” that were shown in Buenos Aires. (Don’t confuse these three so-called episodes with the six episodes contained in “La Flor.” They are simply the way that the film was split up into three segments.) While I’m sure there are film students and devotees who have watched all three segments in succession (or tried to), don’t worry about taking it in all at once. You can’t.
A word to the wise: I’ve been watching it on our wall-mounted television. But when I pulled up the film on my laptop screen, I noticed that part of the film’s frame was truncated. So if you’re streaming on Metrograph, try to watch on a big-screen TV. Of course, the film is also available on Blu-Ray; I’m not sure if a U.S.-friendly DVD format is available.
“La Flor” is also available on Apple TV+.
“Trenque Lauquan” is available for streaming on the Criterion Channel. I reviewed it last year when it appeared in select American cinemas:
Newly available on the Metrograph streaming service are three films by Argentinean director Matías Piñeiro: "Todos mienten" ("They All Lie," 2006), "El hombre robado" ("The Stolen Man," 2007), and "Viola" (2012). I reviewed “Viola” previously:
I reviewed “Argentina, 1985” previously:
While not an El Pampero Cine production, “The Delinquents” (“Los Delincuentes”) resembles one in many ways, including having many familiar actors as part of its cast. I reviewed the film previously:
Here’s an English-language article about Laura Paredes, star of “Trenque Lauquen” and member of Piel de Lava: https://buenosairesherald.com/culture-ideas/laura-paredes-shining-everywhere-between-stage-and-screen. (She’s also the spouse of Llinás, who co-wrote “Argentina, 1985.”) And this article is about the Piel de Lava theater company itself: https://www.lanacion.com.ar/espectaculos/piel-de-lava-la-potente-banda-de-actrices-que-le-pone-el-cuerpo-a-lo-masculino-nid2155955/
I don’t mean to imply that I can read Spanish without help from Google. While that’s my goal, I’m still a long way off.
La Nacion, 26 December 2018: “Cómo Mariano Llinás volvió a marcar la historia del cine argentino” https://www.lanacion.com.ar/espectaculos/cine/como-mariano-llinas-volvio-marcar-historia-del-nid2205685/
La Nacion, 18 September 2020: “Mariano Llinás. ‘Es muy liberador filmar una película y enseguida estrenarla’” https://www.lanacion.com.ar/lifestyle/mariano-llinas-es-muy-liberador-filmar-pelicula-nid2454106/
Ibid.