Review: Flower

By all rights, Zoey Deutch should be a major movie star. Lovely of face and limitless of talent, the actress continues to prove that she's a force to be reckoned with. Her latest film, Flower, is flawed on so many levels yet her commanding and humane performance as rebellious teen Erica Vandross overcomes its numerous failings.

Flower begins with seventeen-year-old Erica performing oral sex on a local cop. It's purely transactional as he's just one in a long list of guys she's blackmailed with the help of her friends Kala (Dylan Gelula) and Claudine (Maya Eshet). The money she extorts not only funds their shopping sprees but also is part of Erica's plan to raise enough money to bail her absentee dad out of jail. Erica has an obviously laissez-faire attitude about most things in life, an attitude perhaps fostered by her relationship with her single mom Laurie (Kathryn Hahn), who treats her more like a pal than a daughter. The two obviously have a genuine affection for one another, and Deutch and Hahn reinforce this with their chemistry, which is relaxed and yet hints at underlying tensions.

Those tensions are tested by the arrival of Laurie's new boyfriend Bob (Tim Heidecker) and his teenage son Luke (Joey Morgan), who has just been released from rehab. Erica's way of making friends with her overweight and depressed future stepbrother? Offering him fellatio, which he promptly declines. She soon figures out another way to help him when she learns that he was sexually molested and that his victimiser is Will (Adam Scott), the hot old guy she's been regularly ogling at the bowling alley. Erica hatches a scheme to entrap Will, but it doesn't exactly go as it should.

Whatever ounce of believability Flower possessed immediately dissipates once Erica sets her plan in motion, and the film's toothless wading into Badlands / Natural Born Killers territory is ridiculous at best. More compelling, though less explored, is its tiptoe through the minefield that is Erica and Laurie's relationship, especially when the former is stripped of her snark and the latter drops the cheerful, best pal mask she's kept on all these years.

Flower

Directed by: Max Winkler

Written by: Alex McAulay, Matt Spicer, Max Winkler

Starring: Zoey Deutch, Kathryn Hahn, Adam Scott, Dylan Gelula, Eric Edelstein, Tim Heidecker, Joey Morgan