The opening shot of Max Winkler’s second film, “Flower,” shows, not ironically, a field of flowers layered with off-camera sounds of wind, panting and ecstasy. Seventeen-year-old Erica (Zoey Deutch) finishes performing oral sex on a local, middle-aged cop who pays her for her services after she and her two friends blackmail him. The “funds” contribute to Erica’s plan to bail her father out of jail.
That’s all within the first five minutes, and it aptly sets the tone for the remaining 90 minutes of a misguided dark comedy drowning in search of its own charm.
Winkler overworks the film with breathless, unrestrained shock-value. The final product tastes like an overcooked, 21st century John Hughes wannabe that cannot do justice to what it wants Erica to be: the next onscreen, coming-of-age rock star. Her story should be treated with more maturity.
Deutch clearly has a lot to offer in the girl-with-no-steady-father-figure archetype. Unfortunately, the role does not allow her to blossom beyond the almost-abandoned intention of Erica’s reunion with her father. The supporting roles – her mother Laurie (a perfect Kathryn Hahn), stepfather Bob (Tim Heidecker, also good) and the “hot older guy from the bowling alley” Will (Adam Scott, making the most of his material) – each provide needed pauses in between Erica’s unfocused shenanigans.
If the film’s three writers (Winkler, Alex McAulay and Matt Spicer) delivered on the promise made in the film’s title, Erica’s relationship with her new stepbrother Luke (Joey Morgan, who does his best to steady the pacing of his scenes) might have been more touching. The charm in youth and adolescence is in the vulnerability and lessons learned in the end. Erica, the “Flower” in question, learns nothing by the time she and Luke reunite in the final scene.
The packaging of Erica’s character – riding her sticker-studded bike with headphones in; her youthful, innocent room decor and college-ruled notebook that contains drawings of men’s genitals – is supposed to be funny and add dimension to an underdeveloped set of quirks. This is the root of the film’s unevenness.
The film withers because it fails to recognize the meat of its own material. It is about as flashy as Erica, who does not come-of-age as much as she tries to regain whatever innocence she had before learning to give blow jobs in middle school. For a girl so open and blunt, she does not get a proper moment of growth in the script. Erica seems street smart enough to understand there is only so much face and f-bombs she can give until something bigger than her – her dad’s absence, her future – makes her realize why she behaves the way she does.
In order to create the emotional “umph” the film needs, Erica must have a moment to break down and find her voice past “whose dick do I gotta suck to get some Coco Puffs?” Her eccentricities are, for the most part, passably cute, only because Deutch fills them with as much honesty as one can get in any sentence that forces “freakin” in as an adjective.
“Flower” craves rebellion but comes off snarky. Teenagers can’t be the trope of their own film if the audience is to take them seriously. The honesty in Deutch’s performance makes up for this inconsistency, but even that can’t save a film desperate for edge and reliant on lazy vulgarities spewed from the mouth of a self-proclaimed “dick whisperer.”
Written by Emilie Kefalas
