disinterested_spectator When he was a little boy, Charles saw his mother naked, and he has been obsessed with his mother and naked women ever since. He pays a psychiatrist to listen to him talk about his mother, and he pays a woman named Lisa to take off her clothes the way his mother did, giving Paul Cox, the director, an excuse to film some full frontal nudity. In between, Charles writes letters to his dead mother, addressed to himself, and goes around looking for statues of naked women to feel up.But I guess that was not enough for Cox, so he gave Lisa a girlfriend, who is a lesbian, and they have sex together, and we get to watch. But Charles wants to watch too, so he pays them for the privilege. And that was not enough for Cox, so when Charles goes to look at David's art, we get to see David with a naked woman. And then when Charles kills David so he can have Lisa for himself (just to watch, not to touch), he has a sculptor disguise David's corpse as a statue. A naked statue, of course.Now, lest we get the idea that Charles is a pervert (or that Cox is a pervert for wanting to make a movie like this), we have Lisa's assurance that Charles is a kind, sensitive, sweet man. And then Cox wraps the whole seedy tale up in a lot of art: we have the organ that Charles plays for the church, we have operatic music unrelentingly going on in the background, we have sculpture and paintings, we have arrangements of flowers, and we have an art class, where a woman poses nude.In other words, Cox really put some lipstick on this pig.

kiwisago Over twenty years ago, a good friend at the time insisted I see this film. And until a few weeks ago, I thought I'd never done so. But when I got about four fifths of the way through it, I realized that I had seen it before. I had forgotten this. My most recent viewing also came from a friend's insistence that I see it (different friend).I can see why people THINK I should like it. It has art, beauty, flowers, sensitivity, an intelligent and gentle approach to sexuality, uniqueness, and flair. But I just don't.I find the central character painfully stagnant, rather than poetically so, with his preoccupation with both the collective past and his own past. He reminds me of people I have known who are equally sensitive and locked in their own worlds, and I find it more tedious than romantic. Rather, I found the obnoxious young painter to be full of life and vivid. So it's not for me. With its antiquated sense of beauty, I suspect it would appeal most easily to people who were born before 1965. It really is a lovely little jewel.

TedMichaelMor An unforgettable film that lingers in memory long after the viewer forgets most details including the narrative itself, "Man of Flowers" is one I saw with my former wife decades ago. I thought she liked it as much as I did. She did not like it at all. At the time, I saw the movie, I linked it with a close friend who lived an acrid and wilted life similar to that of the protagonist Charles Bremer. As I aged, I realized more of myself in the protagonist—something more than a tad unnerving.Critics praise Norman Kaye for his courage in this role—I think they rightly commend him, but the entire film seems an act of great courage for those involved in its creation, that includes Alyson Best (Lisa)and Chris Haywood the young actor who plays her abuser David. Critics note how the film takes a comic turn—it does.The final scene looks like something from a surrealist painting but it most fully to me evokes Ute Lemper's haunting cover of the song "Just a Little Yearning" that " won't be fulfilled

spj-4 This is a classy movie!!! I saw it by chance nearly 20 years ago & it remains one of my great memories of the cinema! Back then, I thought this loner was intriguing but nothing more. In this world's terms, he was a loser, a grief-stricken man sending letters to his deceased mother, friend of the postman, lover of fine art! In his eccentric kingdom that the palatial few are privileged to find! But his complex nature is balanced by the puritanical historical background he is enlivened by, privileged by, but too, imprisoned by! So he sits at his lonely piano in a deserted church of grandeur! Playing his heart out!!!A perfect Catholic solution by the reckoning of some … without hope of any resolution!!! It reminds me of a pair of REAL priests! One who liked to use his Sunday sermons for derision & cynical responses! Another who used pillars of the church to distribute confessions of trusting practitioners! When I was a little boy, hearing for the first time of the "Good Samaritan", I couldn't believed that a priest would walk by on the opposite side of the road, to the injured & beaten collapsed man who was cared for by the rich young man & the innkeeper the hero paid for the keep of the downtrodden one! But there's chambers of music & gardens of intrigue wafting with or without audience here! The settings & the musical background are most impressive, from the fineries of the outside garden, to the gardens that are revealed to us layer by layer in the relationships of the protagonist to the beautiful female model who undresses for the man of mystery, on appointment, to the crass judgemental nature of her accomplice & lover in his satire of derision. Or even in the art classes where this trio mingles in a volatile atmosphere within seconds! The chemical reaction is furious!This is NOT a good movie! It is a CLASSIC!!! Personally, I rate this with "Cinema Paridiso", as one of the finest films ever made!!! Do NOT miss it!