Cinema
Flowers from Another World
Flores de otro mundo
Icíar Bollaín · 1999
Synopsis
Santa Eulalia, a depopulated village in the province of Guadalajara where women of marriageable age are scarce, organises a party so that its bachelors can meet women from elsewhere. On the coach arrive Patricia, an undocumented Dominican woman who is raising two children alone and is looking for stability, and Marirrosi, a mature, divorced woman from Bilbao who is looking for love; Milady, a young Cuban woman whom Carmelo courted in Havana, joins them. Patricia moves in with Damián, who lives with his mother, Marirrosi gets involved with Alfonso, and life together begins.
Context
The screenplay, written with the novelist Julio Llamazares, draws on the parties that bachelors in depopulated villages organised to attract women, the “caravans of women”. The film was shot in several villages of the Castilian sierras, around Jadraque. Presented at Cannes, in a parallel section, on 16 May 1999, it won a prize there, then was released in Spain on 28 May and in France, under its Spanish title, in October. It is its director's second feature film.
Who it is for
A dramatic comedy in Spanish, subtitled, restrained and without effects; it can be followed without knowing anything about the Spanish rural exodus.
Prizes and reception
Grand Prize of the Critics' Week at Cannes in 1999; Goya nominations for Luis Tosar and for the original screenplay.