Nick Hansell | Flowers / 2024

daisies and sunflowers

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nick Hansell (screenwriter and director) Flowers / 2024 [20 minutes]

 

In an interview with the director, he argues that he wishes that there were more films like his when he was growing up. I don’t know the date of Hansell’s birth, but looking at his picture I can tell that when he was growing up there were perhaps far too many films like his, and there still are today which is the problem with the truly sentimental work.

     A seemingly straight football player (we’re talking soccer) who has not yet realized that he is in love with a gay friend and being unable to come to terms with it while being surrounded by his demanding straight friends has been the subject of dozens of gay films, including one of Hansell’s favorites, Heartstopper, which obviously influenced his own work.

    In this version of the oft-told story, Josh (Rocco Roberts) spends most of his day hanging out with fellow jock Rob (Blake Weise), in this short film, simply doing warm up exercises. Rob is clearly meant to represent the school bully, although at least in this pared-down film—apparently, in part, for financial reasons—he doesn’t go about with a gang. Mostly, Rob simply tells the gay school kid, Eddie (Henry Leith) to find another place to read his book, Josh joining his jock body in attempt to scare away the boy who obviously has set himself under a tree to precisely watch them warm up.

    But Josh also has a secret. Eddie is not only a friend he made in a camp devoted to the art of gardening, but without Josh quite realizing it, he is in love with the boy with whom he shared a tent, in the back of his mind recalling what they learned in camp, that some flowers can’t survive around others (such as roses and sunflowers), but others flourish (daisies and sunflowers). Josh has, in fact, still kept his daisy hat, presumably made for him by Eddie.

     On the same day he has told his friend basically to get lost, Eddie tells him that after telling his mother that he was gay, he’s been threatened and kicked out of his own home. That leads, of course, to slow-leaning Josh to invite him to his house. The movie shows us no adults except for the specter of Eddie’s mother to disapprove or even comment on these characters’ choices.

     But meanwhile, as in all these films, there’s going to be a big party to which Josh is invited; he asks Eddie to join him. And the big event at the party is supposed to be Josh kissing, for the first time, Madeline (Abigail Remaley), her first kiss as well. Rob and his supposed girlfriend, Julia (Bria Michelle) wait outside to hear the results.

      But Josh can’t go through with it, and Madeline vomits in “relief” (so she reports), she having already received her first kiss from Julia. In fact, the whole set-up was arranged to keep Rob from suspecting what he has begun intuit, that Madeline and Julia are a lesbian couple. Accordingly, Josh and Madeline pretend to kiss, she smudging a little lipstick just above his lip to make it look real, responding “wow” to the air kiss.

      Eddie is waiting on the street curb, but even though Josh quickly joins him, Eddie is pissed that his friend still doesn’t “get it,” that he is unable to perceive Eddie’s love for him; and ultimately Eddie heads back to his own home to face the closeted life he will be forced to live there with his homophobic mother.

      Slowly, however, it dawns on the dunder-headed Josh just what he truly feels, and in a quite embarrassing tribute to the film’s major theme, flowers—the movie is divided into three parts, “dirt,” “water,” and “flowers” in order to reiterate that subject—director Hansell creates a slightly surreal fantasy in which the lesbian women and the two gay boys are suddenly bedecked with flowers, as Rob appears in an attempt to make up for his bad behavior of the night before, Julia having broken up with him at the party.

      So too does Josh now break off their pretend relationship as he moves toward the tree where Eddie sits reading, finally sitting down next to him. Given the expectations of the genre, we might imagine that Josh and Eddie would kiss; but in Hansell’s daisy and sunflower reality we get no real smooches, as Eddie just leans his head upon Josh’s shoulder to express their togetherness.

      This gay outing is so sweet that even Eddie’s mother might have approved. It’s too bad the director didn’t the opportunity to visit the gay film festivals as a kid; he might have seen at least a large number of cinematic blossoms that expressed the same “very special” message he appears to think he’s creating in Flowers. Alas Nick, you should have known more about the location where you decided to plant your pretty images—a rather catty statement, I admit, since Hansell has worked as location director on several films. But I couldn’t resist since this director clearly has cinematic talent that I wish he’d used to create a more original work of art.

 

Los Angeles, July 4, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2025).