Directed by: Max Winkler
Starring: Zoey Deutch, Joey Morgan, Kathryn Hahn, Adam Scott
Rated R, 90 minutes
If you want proof that good movies can’t exist without good scripts, look no further than “Flower,” whose impressive performances and lively direction can’t save it from a tasteless premise. This is a comedy about terrible people—a genre that’s blossomed in the 21st century, from shows like “Arrested Development” and “Veep” to movies like “Mean Girls” and “Anchorman”—but unlike a good comedy about bad people, “Flower” never decides whether its characters are redeemable, instead pushing them into increasingly vulgar misadventures and then leaving them to squirm.
Situated, ostensibly, somewhere between “Juno” and “Superbad,” “Flower” follows Erica (Zoey Deutch, “Before I Fall”), a high school student who spends her spare time exchanging sexual favors with older men and then blackmailing them with video evidence, all in an effort to raise money to bail her dad out of jail. Erica’s mom, Laurie (Kathryn Hahn, “Afternoon Delight”), unaware of Erica’s pastime but aware of her caprices, just wants Erica to be nice to her fresh-from-rehab stepbrother, Luke (Joey Morgan, “Compadres”). Luke, Erica learns, struggles with a history of pill addiction and was molested by a middle school teacher, Will Jordan (Adam Scott, TV’s “Parks and Recreation”). Seeing an opportunity both to avenge her stepbrother and to collect more cash for her dad’s bail, Erica sets out to seduce and entrap Will, but her not-so-innocent scheme quickly goes awry, and soon Erica and Luke get into far more serious trouble than they could have expected.
In all fairness, there is plenty to like about “Flower,” namely its cast, who dive into their roles with a level of dedication this movie doesn’t deserve. As our lead, Zoey Deutch is more than capable, filling Erica with a juvenile energy that carries the movie along. Even if her performance is overly manic and physical just for the sake of it (in one scene, Erica inexplicably climbs over Luke, says a few lines, and then climbs back over him to leave), any less intensity than what Deutch brings to the role would have made the movie an awful slog, instead of just awful. Kathryn Hahn, meanwhile, is the film’s brightest spot, embracing the exhaustion and explosive frustration of mothering such a cretinous child, while demonstrating at choice moments that mother and daughter are very much cut from the same cloth.
Also, at a brisk 90 minutes, “Flower” thankfully wastes little time. Max Winkler (“Ceremony”) understands the value of entering late and leaving early, so even in the movie’s more disturbing moments, we know we won’t have to cringe for long. And sure, Winkler is just doing a directorial impression of David O. Russell, but his lack of stylistic ambition is excusable, given the quality of the cast.
Less excusable is the movie’s actual premise. To say nothing of the discomfiture of having three men over the age of 30 (Winkler among them) write a story about teenage female sexuality, “Flower” bills its attitude on sex as somehow edgy or brave—which it could have been, if not for the sloppy, perverse sexual politics strung up along the way. Supposedly, “Flower” celebrates the independence of young women and their right to control their own bodies, but it also buys into the conspiratorial narrative that teenage girls who have sex with older men are using those men, and not the other way around. If Max Winkler has ever read “Lolita,” he probably thought Lolita was the villain.
Worse still, “Flower” tries to broach the subject of victim shaming; while characters say that they believe the claims made by victims—surely an important and meaningful thing to assert—it’s couched throughout the movie by lingering skepticism, skepticism that is later validated. Winkler would have us believe he’s showing solidarity with the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, but he comes across as nothing more than an opportunist trying to cash in on a trend. “Flower” is the movie equivalent of men who call themselves feminists but talk over their female co-workers and mansplain politics to them and occasionally throw around the word “slut.” It’s duplicitous pseudo-feminism, a sex-positive manifesto that still makes room for casual homophobia, body shaming, and callous indifference toward the humanity of others. Like its protagonist, “Flower” has a lot of growing up to do, but it doesn’t care enough to actually do it.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 3/30/18.