The feature film return of John Roberts, who we last saw on the big screen 15 years ago with a personal childhood favourite, Paulie, is Day of the Flowers. Don’t be excepting parrots with linguistic skills to the point of self-awareness here.
When their father dies, left-winger Rosa (Eva Birthistle) and her sister material girl Ailie (Charity Wakefield) that she is going to take his ashes to Cuba where Rosa believes he has sent her Mother’s remains. There is one thing that she doesn’t count on, Ailie tagging along. To be able to reunite their parents, they must first survive a new culture, old secrets and themselves.
The backbone of Day of the Flowers is the sibling dynamic, and Birthistle and Wakefield both deliver the goods, bringing a chemistry equal parts bickering and loving. Having said this, the stand out performance is Carlos Acosta as the love interest Tomas who brings his balletic talent of physicality to the most mundane of motions, making him infinitely watchable.
Some moments do have a tendency towards the melodramatic, but what’s wrong with that? This isn’t a film that needs to be weighed down with gritty realism. It’s highly enjoyable as it is; The Puffy Chair if it were made by Dougals Sirk. Also, the melodrama opens it up for levity, allowing the comedy to roll by without much interruption to the dramatic elements and vice versa. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise as it’s written by Eirene Houston who’s previous writing credits include soap opera EastEnders and drama Monarch of the Glen.
The problem is that the strength for the melodrama is the largest weakness for the political parts of the film. It’s held in the same throwaway regard in favour of clichéd three act structure romantic plot points. Sure, expectations of a socialist paradise are confounded when confronted with the crime and poverty and the wealth of a few old revolutionaries, but I wanted to see this take the wheel and steer the plot. Instead it was tied up in the boot smacking on the back seat. The romance kicks in and that’s that, which, again, is fair enough for a romantic drama. The target audience probably won’t be as bothered by all this as me.
A warming, romantic film with the solid plot to carry it and great central and supporting performances. If the melodrama won’t be to your taste, the dips into cliché territory certainly won’t be. Shame about all the unbalanced politics-to-romance ratio. One for a night in in the pyjamas.
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