Flower & Garnet
Flower & Garnet
| 26 August 2002 (USA)
Flower & Garnet Trailers

Garnet and Flower have grown up in an environment of stifled grief. Since their mother died, Ed, their father, mostly just lives without a goal. Eight-year-old Garnet struggles to comprehend the world around him, while sixteen-year-old Flower seeks love with her new boyfriend. Forced to become a real parent to Garnet, Ed buys Garnet a gun and shows, for the first time, his real affection for the boy.

Reviews
Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!
SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie
Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.
OJT Flower and Garnet are siblings. Flower is 16, and Garnet us 8 years old, and very different. Their mother died giving birth to Garnet, something their father has never come over. So Garnet has never gotten the love he should from either a mother nor a father. If it hadn't been for the affection from his sister, he had experienced being loved at all. Still he has feelings even towards ants, which he can imagine have feelings too. If no emotionally detached, he is still a quite, strange little kid.This is a strong, emotional story and beautifully woven drama about a dysfunctional family. Not only is the mother gone, but so is in fact th father. A father which is disconnected from his son, maybe not able to love the son, maybe in some way blaming him for being the reason for the pregnancy death. He is told by his new girlfriend that he is too selfish to love any other. When he finally gets around to give his son a gift on his birthday, not picked out by the sister, he buys Garnet a BB-gun.The film is realistically told, in a slow manner. Still this doesn't more than add to the situation which is following the thoughts of Garnet. Well played by all, and therefore well instructed by the director, this being the first feature film by Keith Behrmann after a few shorts. Tension rides high in this film. There's a certain bad feel of what's going to happen here. If that kind of a film. Still this makes out an important nerve of the film. Well worth watching if you're not expecting an action flick.
wonderdawg Vancouver writer/director Keith Behrman has a feel for small town life. It's there in every frame of this finely crafted drama about a dysfunctional family living in Cache Creek, in the British Columbia interior. That's right, dysfunctional, it's a five dollar word meaning these folks have a lot of problems. The father, Ed (Callum Keith Rennie) has been having an empty affair with a local woman (Kristin Thomsen) who deserves better. The man has kept his emotions in cold storage since his wife died eight years ago while giving birth to Garnet (Colin Roberts). Deep down inside he blames his son for the tragedy. That's a heavy burden for a kid to bear and it shows in his sad eyes. Garnet may not talk much but he's thinking all the time. He's especially curious about nature, the whole cycle of birth and death going on around him. (Reminds me of young Brian in W.O. Mitchell's classic Canadian novel "Who Has Seen the Wind") Garnet's sister, Flower (Jane McGregor), who is eight years older, has been like a mom to him. Now, after a fling with an irresponsible local Romeo, she's about to have a child of her own. Naturally, Ed flips out, afraid history is gonna repeat itself. There's a bitter argument. Flower moves out. Left to his own devices Garnet begins to "act out" in increasingly creepy ways. I could picture this kid showing up at school with a rifle in a few years. The movie shows the circumstances that can lead up to it. I'm not saying he will. In fact, the people in this film rarely do what you expect them to do. The movie takes its time about revealing its mysteries. The clues come in looks and gestures, bits of dialogue, an accumulation of seemingly unremarkable details. (This movie is not for short attention spans.) It's like being in a strange town. It takes awhile to get the lay of the land and meet the neighbours. Behrman proves to be an astute observer of human behaviour and he has pulled some wonderfully restrained performances from his cast. This may be Rennie's best work to date. And that's saying a lot. If you've seen Hard Core Logo or Suspicious River you already know his range. Roberts is a real find and based on her work here McGregor should really stop wasting her talent in piffle like 2002's Slap Her … She's French. Behrman makes good use of landscape to define character and sustain mood. The remoteness of the rural BC locations echoes the emotional isolation of the central characters. Growing up in the small Saskatchewan farming community of Shaunavon has obviously given him a special appreciation for the stark visual poetry in those wide open spaces. Judging from his feature film debut the sky is the limit.
yukari_888 I didn't have any high expectations for this film, because I knew absolutely zero about it at the time. I had no idea what to expect, but it caught my interest right away with the beginning scene. I loved how at the beginning when you don't know what's going on at all, but you slowly learn more and more as you keep watching. This is one of those movies that has numerous layers to it, and the way it goes about telling the story is expertly done.For a film that's about simple, everyday life, it was very climatic at the end, and very realistic. You'll never see another film like it. It's breathtaking. Not in the way you would think either, but that's partly what is most unique about it.
Kitty_Lester This film is another nice canadian movie. It doesn't offend or really do anything much at all. It just drifts along nicely. The acting is good and solid. Technically it is sound. It just doesn't take any chances or make any real comment on anything. It is another movie about the human condition (yawn!).