The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart brings melodrama and Sigourney Weaver as a flower-obsessed matriarch to streaming
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Wednesday, August 2, 2023
Oscillating between pathos and action, this is the dominant mode of popular American cinema (and culture more broadly).
Key Points:
- Oscillating between pathos and action, this is the dominant mode of popular American cinema (and culture more broadly).
- She’s right – but then there’s melodrama and Melodrama, the kind that makes us think of soap operas and damsels tied to train tracks.
All is not as it may seem
- June, who has a complex history with abuse herself, has set up the farm – which cultivates flowers – as a refuge for desperate women.
- We also see, early on, that while June appears to be a strong and compassionate woman, she’s also someone who demands things go her way.
- Based on her knowledge of floriculture, she secures a job as a park ranger apparently on the look out for flower poachers (!).
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Effectively rendered
- All of the elements of Lost Flowers are effectively rendered.
- Alyla Brown as Young Alice manages to combine vulnerability, enthusiasm and naivety in a way that perfectly captures the effects of her circumstances on her development.
- Alycia Debnam-Carey is similarly effective playing the older Alice and, as usual, is a delight to watch.
Pop fiction
- It’s a sentimental but sufficiently distracting diversion – and isn’t this what TV is all about?
- There’s nothing “deep” about it – like its source novel, it’s pop fiction – but why should there be?
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Melodramatic potboilers, worthy classics and DIY escapism: a brief history of the beach read