Popular reviews

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  Review by KYK ★★★★ 2

  somewhere around the 12th hour the director thanks the audience for staying with the film for so long but i was like o no no thank YOU mariano. what a ride. i kinda miss it.

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  Review by Calum Marsh ★★★★★

  There’s this story that when Salman Rushdie read The Adventures of Augie March, he thought he was finished with writing. “What’s the point,” he asked a colleague, “when everything’s already in there?” La Flor: six chapters, fourteen hours, five intermissions, one film. What Wagner called gesamtkunstwerk, “the consummate artwork of the future,” the total work of art. Theatrical, poetic, operatic, painterly, novelistic. Of course cinematic, or post-cinematic. (At one point even pre-cinematic.) In the end it is remarkable not for its length but, because it contains everything, for its concision. The whole world, a lifetime’s experience. I don’t really know what to say. Maybe my new favourite movie?

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★★ 7

  So that's where Mariano Llinás went. Divided into episodes, La Flor clearly isn't television, though there are moments here and there in the sedate but dissonant tone that the director occasionally strikes that remind me of the sort of drained, alien melodrama of Twin Peaks: The Return. It's fascinating to see this film cohere over its decade-long gestation, with time often marked by the uptick in camera quality as murky, pixel-heavy miniDV becomes hi-def crispness. But Llinás makes the most of each segment, using whatever is at his disposal to fit his wandering inspiration. The first episode, with its shallow depth of field and smeary textures, is perfect for its supernatural horror, and at times it even recalls the early…

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  Review by Michael Sicinski ★★★½ 2

  [7]

  PART ONE:

  Of course it is entirely too premature for me to say anything too intelligent about La Flor, since I am only in the middle of Section Two (I think). More specifically, I have seen the mummy episode and am in the middle of the Siempreverde / scorpion toxin double plot. But a few things seem provisionally clear.

  1. Llinás' ensemble of four actresses seems to have been deliberately selected to function, physically speaking, as variations on a theme. It's not that they are difficult to tell apart from one another (they aren't), but that it can take a minute to figure out which one you're looking at. I suspect part of the La Flor project has to…

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  Review by reibureibu 4

  To call La Flor a film is to engage with its presence, a work that attempts to smash the foundations of what 'film' means. Essentially it is a 14-hour anthological piece comprising of 6 different episodes, which by virtue already push what it means to be a film. Now certainly anthologies have existed already, so we can easily look at this as another one albeit long.

  But what's especially interesting (and what's behind all the discourse) is that Mariano Llinás truncates each part. The first four episodes have a beginning but end before they conclude, and the sixth episode starts in the middle of its story. This renders the fifth one the only part that is complete, which coincidentally is…

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  Review by Scott Nye 2

  Still wrapping my head around it critically, but I want to answer some non-spoilery questions that I myself had going into it.

  SHOULD I WATCH THIS ALL IN ONE SITTING?
  God no. It is pointedly - as in, specified within the film itself - designed to be watched on three separate days, in three separate parts. Episode 1 and 2 the first day, Episode 3 the second, and Episodes 4-6 the third. You could make a case that it works just as well dividing up the third part into two (so watching Episode 4 one day, then Episodes 5 and 6 another day). But if you can keep it to a fairly compact timeframe, you'll benefit, because...

  ARE THE EPISODES…

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  Review by Logan Kenny ★★★★★ 5

  the heart lasts forever.

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  Review by noma ★★★★★ 7

  4+α Women, presented to you by the Foundation of Mysteries...

  the α is both a sign of things to come, and a representation of contributions that have always been there, only visible to us now because our brains have only just evolved enough to register it. the α is part of every equation, almost hidden from view from casual mathematicians and scientists — and yet so big is its overall contribution to the concept of the universe at large, so all-encompassing in its influence in the thoughts people think and ideas people have about math, science, the universe and the alphabet bones of the human body that a movie made exclusively to delve into the concept of the α and…

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  Review by Allison M. 🌱 ★½ 4

  It's amazing how some things are lauded.

  When the director describes the design of the movie in the beginning, it was the most interesting part. I started watching it on Saturday 8/15/20 and got about 4 hours into it. I think I dreamed that night that I wrote a short spy film and it was a great success (but I remember none of the plot or even if there was one). I woke up Sunday and finished my long, arduous task. I knew after watching the first part that I DID NOT LIKE IT. It has some amazing imagery and sometimes in some episodes it has some semblance of a story. I am grateful to MUBI for making it available,…

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  Review by Jesse Snoddon ★★★★★

  "Would you like to be my enemy?"

  If anyone is wondering where I've been for a few days, La Flor is nearly 14 hours long, and I finally crossed this white whale off my anticipated viewing list. Now that I've returned from my long sojourn....

  La Flor's runtime of just under 14 hours is certain to scare off potential viewers. It's anything but the daunting chore the length may make it seem and it isn't a punishing endurance test. There are intermissions (real intermissions too - not the kind where you have to rush to press pause that are only there as a nostalgic nod) and it is broken into 5 parts. So fear not, there are plenty of opportunities…

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  Review by belu borelli 💐👩🏻‍💻 ★★★★★ 5

  Bueno, terminé. 
  Nunca vi algo así. No puedo creer que esto exista y que sea todo patrimonio nuestro. 
  Qué equivocados los que piensan que el cine argentino está muerto. El cine argentino está más vivo que nunca. 
  La Flor te invita a que seas parte. En varios momentos, durante el episodio 3 y 5 para ser más específica, me pasó que fui consciente que esto es más que una película. Es una experiencia cinematográfica. 
  El episodio 2 lo vi el año pasado y lo tuve que volver a ver porque me fascinó. El episodio 3 probablemente sea de lo mejor que vi en todo el espectro del cine nacional, y como para no. 
  Mariano Llinás en 14 horas mechó referencias…

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  Review by Mark ★★★★½ 2

  I DID IT! i watched all 14 hours of this and loved every minute of it (well maybe not all, but at least 700 of them)