Max Winkler, director of the coming-of-age movie Flower, corrects me when I mention the film was shot in only 16 days.
“Fifteen-and-a-half days,” he says. “I would have done wonders with that extra half!”
Star Zoey Deutch chimes in. “It is not my job to go, ‘I don’t have enough time.’ My job is to figure out a way to make it work and service the story and the character. All I know is that what is important for a movie that shoots for 15-and-a-half days or for six months is preparation and what you bring to the table before the table is set. That is the most important element.”
Flower is a coming-of-age story in reverse. When we first meet the adolescent main character Erica, played by Deutch, she is already jaded by life. Her father is in jail and she is involved in a very dubious blackmail scheme to earn his bail money.
Over the course of time she regains her innocence, flip flopping the usual teen movie formula.
Winkler, the son of television icon Henry (The Fonz) Winkler, says the success of Flower is a testament to Deutch’s handling of the role.
“It is such a fine line to tread, to have that bravado but at the same time the intense vulnerability to know that she is really just doing this to cover up all this intense fear she has.”
The actress, best known for turns in Before I Fall and Why Him?, finds the qualities that make us feel for Erica. Do we care about Erica the blackmailer? Not particularly. But we can care about why she resorts to blackmail and that’s where Deutch shines.
“I was 20 when we shot this,” says Deutch, “which isn’t so far from 17 so I was able to pull and be inspired from my own experiences. … Erica is very frustrated by the world and she is very frustrating. I remember being frustrated and being frustrating to other people for sure.”
Deutch is winning raves for her work as the rebellious and sassy teen — The Wrap called her performance “truly exceptional” while The Playlist christened her as “charismatic, uber-magnetic” — but don’t ask her about her craft.
“The truth is, and the reason you can probably sense my hesitancy,” she says, “is that I find it really pretentious when actors talk about process. The way I talk about it sounds pretentious so I steer away from it. I would rather be self-deprecating than sound like overly precious about the whole thing.”
Flower is a coming-of-age story — in reverse.
She will say that the authenticity of the character came from research and conversation with her director and fellow cast members.
“I did a lot of reading,” she says, “everything from books about female teenage angst and struggle, like Reviving Ophelia. We were always talking about consent and how Erica always relies on her charms and never allows anyone else any semblance of control over her.”
Winkler and Deutch only spent 15-and-a-half days on set but have forged a mutual appreciation for society. “My greatest feeling about this movie is just how brilliant Zoey is in it,” Winkler says.
“There is something really special in pure entertainment,” says Deutch, “and I think Max made something super entertaining and super interesting and super different.”
“Flower” is a coming of age story in reverse. When we first meet the adolescent main character Erica (Zoey Deutch) she is already jaded by life. Her father is in jail and she is involved in a very dubious plan to earn his bail money. Over the course of time she regains her innocence, flip flopping the usual teen movie formula.
Erica lives with her mom (Kathryn Hahn) and the latest of mom’s new boyfriends-turned-fiancées (Tim Heidecker) in the San Fernando Valley. A hellraiser, Erica and her pals Kala (Dylan Gelula) and Claudine (Maya Eshet) target older men to blackmail. When she has enough cash she hopes to buy dad his freedom. Her rebel-with-a-cause life is turned upside down by the arrival of Luke (Joey Morgan), her troubled soon-to-be stepbrother. Luke brings with him a dark secret that could change everything in Erica’s life for better and for worse.
No spoilers here.
The beauty of “Flower” is less in its wonky storyline and more in its effervescent performances. The down ‘n dirty indie—it was shot in just 16 days by Henry “The Fonz” Winkler’s son Max—focuses on Erica’s journey which rests comfortably in Deutch’s capable arms. The actress, best known for turns in “Before I Fall” and “Why Him?,” navigates the film’s uneven tonality, hurtling over its implicit quirkiness to find the qualities that make us feel for Erica. Do we care about Erica the blackmailer? Not particularly. But we can care about why she resorts to blackmail and that’s where Deutch shines.
“Flower” is all over the place. In its quest to be unconventional it covers a lot of ground. It’s part quirky family drama, part rebellious teen comedy and even part “Bonnie and Clyde” but Deutch and cast, including Morgan as sad sack Luke and the always fantastic Hahn, breathe life into it.
Richard’s reviews Michael Fassbender as iCon Steve Jobs in the movie of the same name, Ellen Page and Julianne Moore as LGBT trailblazers in “Freeheld,” Deepa Mehta’s “Beeba Boys” and the Alison Brie rom com “Sleeping with Other People.”
“Sleeping with Other People” might have been more effective if it didn’t adhere so strictly to the old possum that men and women can’t be friends. Lainey and Jake have a wonderful platonic relationship, spending quality time walking in Central Park, sharing secrets and generally doing the things friends do in lieu of pawing at one another. In the end it feels like a cheat (MILD SPOILER ONLY IF YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN A ROM COM AND CAN’T FIGURE OUT WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO THESE TWO) to pair them off at the end when it would have been far more interesting for the pair to remain platonically involved and explore the dynamics of that relationship. To have them fall into one another’s arms and beds is the crowd-pleasing way out, but less satisfying as a look at the way actual humans relate to one another.
Sudeikis and Brie are a fetching couple and have good chemistry. In their quieter moments they’re quite appealing but this is no 21st century “When Harry Met Sally.” Jake’s fast patter is only about half as charming as the movie thinks it is and Lainey’s obsession with Matt feels overwrought and unreal, like “Fatal Attraction” without the simmering rabbit. The occasional bits of sharp dialogue and the laughs are welcome, but generally everything—the plot points and base emotions—are telegraphed early and often.
Watching “Sleeping with Other People” I couldn’t help but think the movie focused on the wrong couple. Jake’s business partner Xander (Jason Mantzoukas) and his wife Naomi (Andrea Savage) are a much more dynamic duo. Too bad director Leslye Headland didn’t give them more attention while Lainey and Jake worked through their issues off screen.
“The Overnight” is a smart, insightful but most of all, very uncomfortable film.
The story begins when Emily (Taylor Schilling) and Alex (Adam Scott), a married coupled transplanted from Seattle to Los Angeles for work, meet Kurt (Jason Schwartzman), an outgoing man who chats them up in a local park. Their kids hit it off so Kurt invites the couple over for pizzas and wine with his wife Charlotte (Judith Godreche). Eager to make friends, Emilia and Alex accept and enter a world ripe with sexual tension, voyeurism, skinny-dipping and self confession. What begins as a dinner party quickly erupts into part drug and drink binge, part therapy session. “This is California,” says the slightly naïve Adam, “maybe this is what dinner parties are like here.”
On the surface “The Overnight” is simply about that moment when, as they say in the film, the party turns from freewheeling California vibe to swinger vibe but that doesn’t do the story justice. That’s the Cole’s Notes version of the story but the actual tale is much more interesting.
This is a parlour show where most of the action takes place in one place. Think “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?” In this case the bulk the story happens in Kurt and Charlotte’s upscale home as the older, more jaded couple wile away the hours, breaking down Emily and Adam’s inhibitions while revealing their own martial issues and weaknesses. It’s a power struggle with a constantly shifting dynamic that turns into a guessing game as to what, exactly, is going on. It is that ambiguity that propels the action forward.
Good casting keeps things interesting—Schwartzman is smarmy perfection—and at just 80 minutes “The Overnight” is the right length for a cat and mouse story. Any longer and this story of sexual frustration might have become frustrating, but director Patrick Brice brings the story to an end before the anxiety of the situation becomes too uncomfortable for the audience.
The first time around “Hot Tub Time Machine” stars John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson and Clark Duke, grappled with the mysteries of the Red Bull-fuelled space and time continuum as they tripped back in time to the Regan years.
Since we’ve seen them last they (minus Cusack, who is replaced by Adam Scott) have exploited “their knowledge of the future for personal gain.” What they did in the past changed their futures and Nick (Robinson) is now a popular songwriter—he “wrote” “MMMBop” and “Feelin’ Like Teen Spirit”—while Lou became the “father of the internet,” and the creator of the search engine Lougle. Adam’s (Cusack) absence is explained away with a passing reference to an “experiential journey.”
They are rich beyond belief—“That hot tub really turned it all around.”—but soon discover the future isn’t exactly the way their remembered it—wrap your head around that—when Lou takes a bullet from an unknown assassin and Nick and Jacob fire up the hot tub to try and stop the shooting before it happens. They inadvertently end up in the future in a world they don’t quite understand. “Who is to say the past isn’t this present.”
“Hot Tub Time Machine 2” feels like it was written by a group of frat boys in the throws of a raging kegger at the Delta Tau Chi House after a “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” marathon. All the animal house trademarks are here—vomit gags, jokes about sex with animals, a drug trip, testicle terror and homophobic razzing. The only thing missing is Seth Rogen and boy, did he miss a bullet.
Working from a script that feels improvised, the usually funny guys Corddry, Robinson, Duke and Scott are at sea in a movie that abandons the story—the search for the shooter is side tracked for twenty or more minutes while the guys flit through time—in favour of raunchy jokes and random situations. As the cast tries in vain to find the funny you hope that the next trip in the Hot Tub Time Machine will be their last.
“Hot Tub Time Machine 2” is a waste of time—past and present.
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
