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Harrison's
Flowers
Starring:Marie
Trintignant, Alun Armstrong, Christopher Clarke, Andie MacDowell,
David Strathairn
Directed by:Elie Chouraqui
Produced by:Albert J. Cohen, Elie Chouraqui, Albert Cohen
Written by:Elie Chouraqui, Didier LePecheur, Isabel Ellsen,
Michael Katims
Distributor:Universal Focus
Release Date:March 15 2002
This could be considered a good period piece as the trials of
Slobodan Milosevic head the national papers. He was formerly
the president of Yugoslavia. He is accused of over 600 Kosovo
Albanians deaths. If you have been living in a shell he is currently
on trial for crimes against humanity, and war crimes during
his reign as president.
That is what this movie has a big part of it's focus on. It
is extremely graffic. When Sarah Lloyd (Andie MacDowell) finds
out that her husband Harrison (David Strathairn) is presumed
dead in a far away country she uses shear guts, and determination
to find him. Harrison is an award winning photojournalist who
is on assignment a lot. Feeling like he hasn't spent appropriate
time with his kids he decides to take one more assignment. When
he is asked to go to cover the escalating violence in the Serbo-Croatian
War he doesn't hesitate to fullfill his duty. The film focuses
on too many issues, and loses its direction trying to accomadate
both the love story or the terrible atrocities. Does this film
want to be a film about endearing love? Or does it want to say
something about the ethnic cleansing that it so visibly shows?
French director Elie Chouraqui does an above average job portraying
the horror's of the war very realistically, but fails to be
convincing on the side of love. The main question that could
be asked is how could anybody search for a loved one while such
atrocities were going on around them? How could she (Sarah Lloyd)
convince Harrison's associates to risk life, and limb to search
for him? The answer is that Sarah doesn't seem to have what
it takes, she doesn't seem to have the backbone necessary to
do such things.
Andie Macdowell star of such films as Sex, Lies, and Videotape
seems more slated for romantic film, which this theatrical release
takes a stab at. It falls short of convincing on that aspect.
If the relationship was to be believable it should have built
upon their relationship more, before he goes off missing. It
reminds me of Pearl Harbor where you have a love story messing
up what it really should have been about. The movie is slow
throughout, but picks up speed when you see the scenes of the
ethnic cleansing. The scenes are very graffic, and makes a fine
point of the sickness that had overtaken the nation. This is
a film that has some heart to it, and really could have made
a statement about the problems in Yugoslavia, but misses.
