Directors – Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard – 2024 – UK – Cert. 12a – 73m
****
A suitcase containing love letters, telexes and photographs found after her death, which inspired songs from singer Emilíana Torrini, becomes the key to a woman’s interior life – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 9th
Every so often, a feature film turns up that doesn’t really fit the obvious categories, and this is one of those. It might be described as a cross between a documentary, a music promo and a home movie. Yet, none of those makeshift, pressed-into-service labels quite do it justice.
It’s a documentary because its starting point is a collection of personal items – love letters, telexes and photographs – kept in a suitcase by a woman named Geraldine Flower and subsequently found by her daughter Zoe some time after Geraldine’s death. Which is to say, found by her daughter Zoe, Zoe’s musician husband Simon Byrd and their friend the singer Emilíana Torrini. The latter had recorded some four albums and had come to a sort of creative impasse where she wanted to make another album but just couldn’t find the right creative spark. And then, the contents of Geraldine’s rediscovered case provided that impetus.
That said, this is not (as it might very easily have been) a movie about Torrini’s creative journey. It’s more about Geraldine’s personal items, and what they reveal of not only Geraldine herself. but also various men who met or admired her. These items date from the 1960s, a time before mobile phones or personal computers, before the instant communication of social media or even emails or texts, when people wrote postcards or letters which might then take days (or, if long distances were involved, weeks) to reach their intended recipient through the post.
Perhaps, today, in our tech-augmented world where we can instantaneously send someone a message halfway around the globe, the art of letter-writing has largely and sadly been lost. And yet because these items are not so much documented as held up for our attention, turned into readings by actors or used as the starting point for strange, dreamlike moving images, it’s not really a documentary. And because the subject is not followed around with a movie camera, or the movie is assembled from existing footage of the subject, it’s again not really a documentary.
It’s a music promo because Emilíana Torrini and her band (Simon Byrt, Mara Carlyle, Liam Hutton, Ian Kellett and Lovisa Sigrunardottir) are filmed performing ten songs inspired by Geraldine’s items. The album came out mid-2024, and the film followed it afterwards, A large part of the running length showcases the songs, including visually arresting dancing by choreographer Kate Coyne (formerly of the Michael Clark company) alongside Viva Seifert and Saeed Esmaeli. Yet, it’s not really a music promo because it’s not trying to sell me the album, so much as use the songs and the dancing to explore the artefacts found in Geraldine’s suitcase. At the same time, this also enjoys the songs for their own sake.
It’s a home movie because Geraldine’s daughter Zoe is the film’s first-time producer (following a solid, two-decades-long stint as a London-based film publicist) and inevitably has a highly personal connection to this subject. This is, essentially, a film about the producer’s mum. While I’m sure Zoe wouldn’t lay any claim to be the film’s director(s), there’s a very real sense in which this is her movie as much as directors Forsyth and Pollard (previously and famously the duo behind Nick Cave documentary 20, 000 Days on Earth, 2014). And yet because Zoe already knows her way around the independent movie business, even if working at the producer level is new to her, it doesn’t feel like a home movie or an amateur work.
And given the appearance of actors such as Caroline Katz (Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and Legendary Tapes, Caroline Katz, 2020) in shots playing Geraldine, sometimes along with Alice Lowe, and others including Nick Cave, Richard Ayoade, Siggi Baldursson, Mark Monero, and Angus Sampson as the readers of letters to Geraldine, it clearly isn’t a home movie in which the subject is followed around with a movie camera, or a movie is assembled from existing footage of the subject. The artefacts form the core of the piece, while the actors’ performances along with the musicians and dancers interpretations augment the concept.
Despite a running length of a mere 73 minutes, the whole thing is strangely absorbing and affecting. And, perhaps because of Producer Flower’s involvement in what is essentially a film about her mum, deeply personal. This is a movie to go to, get lost inside, and enjoy.
The Extraordinary Miss Flower is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, May 9th.
Trailer: