‘She Loved Blossoms More’: Thessaloniki Review

Dir: Yannis Veslemes. Greece/France. 2024. 86mins

Yannis Veslemes established himself as one of many voices of the Greek Bizarre Wave with Norway (2014) and now, co-writing with Dimitris Emmanouilidis, he provides a constructive tsunami of oddness with this drugged-up slacker twist on tried time journey. A delirious combine that options baroque physique horror and attracts on all the pieces from Eighties fantasy comedy to Mario Bava, Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, it’s little marvel that any kind of absolutely coherent narrative will get swept away. Nonetheless, for many who favour visceral visuals over sturdy storytelling, it’s a trendy deal with.

Style-bender with cult potential

She Cherished Blossoms Extra is making its bow on residence turf at Thessaloniki Movie Competition after its world premiere at Tribeca Movie Competition earlier this yr. It has already had stop-offs at fantasy-focused festivals together with Sitges, and additional horror occasions and midnight strand screenings appear seemingly for this genre-bender with cult potential. Regardless of its a number of influences, the tip result’s distinctive and will additionally enchantment to specialist distributors.

Hedgehog (Panos Papadopoulos) and his brothers Dummy (Julio Katsis) and Japan (Aris Balis) dwell in a shambling pile of a home someplace close to Athens, the place they’re making an attempt to show their mom’s artwork deco wardrobe right into a machine that can deliver her again from the lifeless. It’s an experiment that, thus far, isn’t going effectively – fairly presumably as a result of the lads busily eat industrial portions of hallucinogenic medicine in between tryouts, resulting in outcomes that make The Fly appear to be little one’s play. After a pig meets a sticky finish and a hen loses its head to a unique dimension – not that it stops the remainder of the animal operating round on this one – it appears virtually inevitable {that a} human can be going to have a closet encounter.

Enter Samantha (Sandra Abuelghanam Sarafanova), whose unusual sexual assignations with greater than one of many siblings are only the start of her issues. By this level, nevertheless, the narrative has change into so slippery it’s exhausting to inform what’s actual and what’s merely a part of the collective psychedelic journey the brothers are taking. One might take concern with the best way wherein Samantha is handled with no extra depth than the pig or the hen – one thing the director slyly nods to by giving the character the identical identify as a turtle that briefly seems, as if he intentionally needs her to be imprecise.

But the characters of the brothers are scarcely extra concrete. As a substitute Veslemes’ actual focus lies in world creation and, in that regard, he and artwork director Elena Vardava craft an atmosphere that’s concurrently grungily actual and trippily surreal. The pc elements used for the brothers’ machine have an analogue retro vibe that matches the mansion’s grounds, which boast extra floor fog than an Eighties gentle metallic pop video. The physique horror components, nevertheless, are bang up-to-date and stickily genuine, and the arrival of Jeunet and Caro favorite Dominique Pinon because the boys’ demanding father provides additional fantasy gas to the hearth.

Over all of it flows an endlessly creative rating from the director, goosing the extra anticipated components of horror music with unusual and unsettling additions. Veslemes has had a parallel profession as a composer – writing beneath the identify Felizol – and has scored a number of movies along with his personal, together with Suntan (2016).

The plot, just like the boys, doesn’t actually go wherever, however that additionally provides to the troubling temper. The inside of mum’s wardrobe is upholstered, giving it the air of a padded cell, and there are additional nods to insanity, together with a reference to The Shining’s boring boy Jack. Veslemes doesn’t simply need us to observe these males slide into madness, he needs it to scrub us away too. Whether or not you sink or swim in that atmosphere is fully a matter of style.