Charles is given to us as a naif, a tap for the best and worst of the world around him. Depending on their capacities for self reflection those agents of the world variously learn about themselves or harden further into narcissism. Lisa the model almost feels guilty taking his money for her stripping performances, struck by his line drawing at the act. She knows there is more there to understand. His psychiatrist, venal and oafish, is drawn to Charles's stillness and opens up to him more than the professional reverse, but still fleeces him with extra sessions at heightened rates. And David, Lisa's boyfriend, the Neanderthal junkie action painter can only see Charles as an exploitable old square but even then lowers himself to paint what Charles prefers. The minister at the church across the road where Charles goes to play improvised twelve tone fantasias on the organ, sees Charles as a good man. The postman, bursting with facts and his interpretations of them to prove that the world is as "fucked" as he believes it is, agrees with the minister. Increasingly throughout this effortlessly areligious movie we are given Charles as a holy fool.
If we see Charles's candle light toned sanctum as a utopia we understand that it is ripe for invasion and sacking. How this happens and how it is met are matters for spoilers which I won't give here, regardless of how difficult this film is to find. What I will say is that the astute writing that pits antagonists against each other along with all they represent is done with great craft and singled this film and all the earlier titles of its director Paul Cox against an Australian film industry that was largely directionless and low on substance.
Two elements make this so: characters so well written that even those of fewer dimensions come across as parented, and the canny dialogue written by Bob Ellis which is almost constantly funny. There are flaws, here and there. The hilarious self exposing radio preacher's hypocrisy is subverted by the clumsy choral jingle. The naming of the object which consolidates the conclusion is needlessly silly. But then there is the world of Charles's memory, presented as saturated silent cinema, glorious to see but constantly unsettling. His mother's hot/cold relationship with him and his father's often creepy attentiveness to the high tea realm of Charles's childhood as a boy rejected in an environment of material comfort. Poor little rich boy? Well, the blaring Donizetti singing links everything to do with his childhood, mother, assaulted self-esteem and his current daily attempts to address his departed parent becomes a kind of cosy straightjacket. If Charles's development was arrested at childish naivete it might just be that he had reason to fear pursuit of any knowledge. Will these turns of events be enough to break the torpor that prevents him from greater intimacy with the beauty he craves than just looking?
Paul Cox was notable among his community of Australian film makers through his insistence on strong characters, plots with real working parts and rich dialogue. He came early to the attention of influencers like Phillip Adams and collaborators like John Clarke and Bob Ellis but if he didn't already have the discipline to fashion such complete films that would have meant little. I was drawn to Man of Flowers before its release by its immediate predecessor, the wonderful autumnal rom com Lonely Hearts (also starring Norman Kaye) and the tone that felt new in an Australian cinema context for being non-American and vaguely European (Cox is Dutch born). The settings and lines were all Australian but their finish had a more strident cinema craft to it.
I remember thinking it strange that one of my most respected tutors at Griffith Uni, Sylvia Lawson, grimaced when I mentioned that I was eager to see this film. On paper, it might look like an old man's tug fantasy including women stripping, lesbianism and an idealised kind of masculinity swathed in luxury and ready to take on younger alphas. I graduated that year and didn't see it until the following year when it continued to burn through the arthouses and campus cinemas, so I never did get to ask if she did finally see it.
Would she have erased her resistance? Who knows? It did occur to me, though, that I might have been marvelling at it initially for the strength of its characters players and writing that set it so far apart from the rest of the local fare. Was I just celebrating something for doing the job it was meant to do rather than fall short through expectation? No, I think I would still have loved it, regardless. I know I saw it more than once, getting myself and small gangs out to the Schonell at UQ for more. Spotting the cameos was a fun foyeur conversation. Would any of us turn out differently if we'd had Werner Herzog as a dad? Are we sure that Patrick Cook doesn't do that with bronze? How much of the postie's rants were actually written by the playwright Barry Dickins who played him? And wasn't Bob Ellis --
Wait a minute. Bob Ellis' portrayal of the psychiatrist as a money grubbing Jew is a real sticking point, here. He's more east European than Viennese (i.e. he's not going for a Freud cliche) but his nasal toned callousness borders on panto. His dialogue would have been funny in any accent and the one he adopts is a clearly deliberate choice. Do we let the era forgive this? Was Ellis basing the voice on a doctor he had been treated by? You still shouldn't need the accent for that. Am I being too sensitive? Maybe I'm exposing my own guilt at finding it funny at the time. Maybe it really is just an imagined Euromash accent to make the lines funnier. It troubles me if I see it now and I think that would be the same with any comedy that tried something like it from the time. So, unresolved but needed mentioning.
Aside from that the cast offer characters that are both rich and real. Tony Llewellyn Jones's minister who can't look anyone in the eye suggests that has a history in his two brief appearances. Chris Heywood's boomy oaf screams internal insecurities that only a lot of cocaine can conceal. Alyson Best's Lisa uses her restrained performance to show us someone finding it hard to break from co-dependency and pursue something more like self-determined happiness. Without a word, Hillary Kelly gives us a woman who both comforted and alienated her son, giving too much regard to her husband's unimaginative authority. And finally it is Norman Kaye's movie; his Charles meets us as vulnerable as one of the petals on his beloved blooms meting out complications and hues that bring him to great depth while never raising his voice from its quiet, crisp, observational tone. He shows us Charles's damage through his gentleness which also proves his strength.
I fell off the Paul Cox wagon in the later '80s and really need to do something about that. He kept working up to his death in the mid 2010s, producing a new film or tv production annually, working with the likes of Isabelle Huppert and Irene Papas as well as his rep theatre cast of actors and writers. I haven't examined why I fell away from his audience but I think it was around the same time as I stopped anticipating new Peter Carey books or Hal Hartley movies and probably for the same reason that others had turned up on the block with different things to offer. But not everyone blands out the way Scorsese has. David Lynch just got more individualistic in vision. Back in the mists of poetry history, so did John Milton. For all I know, Paul Cox's strongest work was ahead of him after Man of Flowers. Maybe it's that. Maybe I just didn't want to risk finding out the opposite. Well, seeing this again and being reminded of its strengths and delights, I think I've just given myself some long delayed homework.
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