An experimental art project, which recreates real letters from former lovers sent to the late Geraldine Flower — in the form of dramatised readings, musical performances and interpretative dance.
The Extraordinary Miss Flower is not your usual documentary. In fact, it’s hard to know whether it even meets the definition of documentary. It’s an eccentric, romantic, experimental tribute to an extraordinary woman, and the people who loved her. In 2019, Geraldine Flower died; her daughter Zoe found among her possessions a suitcase stuffed with hundreds of love letters, sent to her by a succession of lovestruck men across the 1960s and 1970s.
Those letters form the basis of this hybrid art project from 20,000 Days On Earth directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard: part docu-drama, part visual music album, part letter-reading recital, part kaleidoscopic art installation, part interpretive dance… In its own unique way, it slowly builds a picture of a life, in all its mystery and adventure, and the people that life touched.
“…it is, if nothing else, an ode to the art of letter-writing, with adolescent yearning and lustful erotica seeping out of these typewritten missives.”
Singer Emilíana Torrini — whose work in film includes singing ‘Gollum’s Song’ over the credits of The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers — plays Zoe Flower’s effective surrogate here, embarking on a journey of discovery as she unravels parts of Geraldine’s life that were never spoken of. Caroline Catz plays the on-screen Geraldine, while a succession of interesting faces and voices — including Richard Ayoade and Nick Cave — read the letters she received.
And what letters: it is, if nothing else, an ode to the art of letter-writing, with adolescent yearning and lustful erotica seeping out of these typewritten missives. In one eyebrow-raising letter, a former lover recounts how he made love to a new sexual partner, while thinking about Geraldine the entire time. “It was pure bloody love,” the letter goes, read by Cave.
Then Torrini and her band perform a song inspired by the letter, amid some speculation on what could have gone wrong, aided by psychedelic visuals and some slow-motion bodily movement. The truth of what happened in Geraldine’s life — who these men were to her, what her nomadic life in the 1960s and 1970s actually entailed, what kind of person she was really — remains elusive. But perhaps that’s the point. This is an unpredictable, unusual impression of a life, one that won’t be for all tastes, but there are some real esoteric pleasures to be had here.
A true original: an impressionistic portrait of a lost life, recreated in multiple forms with a gorgeous soundtrack. Odd, but unique.
