Sitges 2010: ALL FLOWERS IN TIME Review

When Jonathan Caouette appeared on the film scene with Tarnation in 2003 response was sharply divided between those who felt Caouette was a genius and those who thought he was simply self indulgent. Expect the same response to his latest effort, All Flowers In Time.

Caouette has kept a surprisingly low profile since Tarnation, directing only a pair of documentary shorts and co-directing a documentary about music festival All Tomorrow's Parties in the years since. And given that Tarnation itself was a quasi-doc then All Flowers In Time represents something entirely new for the director in that the doc form is shed entirely in favor of a surreal, fractured narrative.

Borrowing liberally from the David Lynch playbook, AFIT is a sort of abstract riff on the red-eye phenomenon of flash photography and the obsessive idea that maybe we get red-eye not because of reflected light but because we've got demons living within us. There's no true narrative to speak of, the film structured instead as a sort of elliptical series of moments morphing from one to the next, the most significant portion of the film anchored by Chloe Sevigny.

Caouette mashes styles together throughout, at moments showcasing a sharp, absurd sense of humor, at others a legitimately unsettling sort of hyper-reality, at others jamming stuff in seemingly purely because he can. The rapidly shifting styles don't always mesh well together and Caouette could arguably stand to learn that sometimes less can be more and that a bit of self restraint can be the most effective play. That said the man's technical ability and creative vision is undeniable. Though flawed All Flowers In Time is an interesting progression for Caouette and an intriguing promise of things to come.