21-07-2025
The Extraordinary Miss Flower
Love letters written in the 1960s and 70s inspire an extraordinary fusion of music, drama and documentary
Year: 2024
Certificate: 12
Watch now on BFI Player
There's something inherently romantic about letters, not least because of how vanishingly rare is to receive one these days. In 2019, a suitcase full of love letters from men written in the 1960s and 70s to one Geraldine Flower was found in her London flat after she died. The letters moved the Icelandic singer-songwriter Emilíana Torrini to make an album and that album soundtracks this fusion of drama and documentary, in which familiar faces such as Nick Cave, Richard Ayoade and Alice Lowe read the letters and Doc Martin's Caroline Catz plays Miss Flower herself.
If you're looking to learn about the nitty gritty of Flower's life, you won't get much of that here - beyond that this adventurous spirit grew up in Australia and moved to London, working as a secretary and journalist - but what is clear is that she was someone who inspired ardour, and it's that somewhat delirious state that the film portrays so acutely through the letters. So, if you're after a luxuriantly retro but also pleasingly experimental cinematic experience, this could well be the ticket. (73 minutes)
