Flowers of Evil

Film description

At first glance Kasuga is a calm, intelligent student, a fond reader of once scandalizing "Flowers of Evil" by Baudelaire (which is a kind of pose, though). The boy lives in a little town at Japanese province and has a crush on the beautiful Saeki, which, however, he does not dare to tell her. His impulse to take home the girl’s gym uniform unleashes an avalanche of dramatic events. As it turns out, Nakamura, a disliked class outsider distanced to everyone, witnessed the theft. The girl blackmails both Kasuga and Saeki into her dangerous game. The fates of the trio will now intertwine in a perverse embrace, which will reveal their unexpected new faces and determine their future lives.

The faithful adaptation of Shuzo Oshimi’s manga (which also had an anime version) is a naughty fairy tale about unpredictability of human nature and discovering one’s own needs while growing up. The tone of the tale oscillates from one extreme to another and everything is presented in strong vibrant colours. Such a mixture can only be found in Japanese cinema.

Marcin Krasnowolski