A Flower in the Mouth
A Flower in the Mouth is a film diptych about time running out and how to live through the days that remain. The first act, filmed as an observational documentary in the world’s largest flower market, follows millions of bouquets transiting through a cavernous refrigerated hangar to be sold at auction, an industrial process at once beautiful and terrifying. The film transitions to fiction in a second act freely adapted from a Pirandello play. A man with a flower-shaped tumour on his lip accosts a traveller in an all-night café. Their seemingly mundane conversation becomes a metaphysical monolog as the man, feeling death upon him, clings to life by scrupulously observing its activity, tracking reality in every detail, as if to fill the gap between himself and the rest of the world.
Credits
Director
- Éric Baudelaire
Writers
- Éric Baudelaire and
- Anne-Louise Trividic
DoP
- Claire Mathon
Editor
- Claire Atherton
Producers
- Éric Baudelaire (Poulet-Malassis) and
- Sylvie Pialat (Les Films du Worso)
Co-producers
- Jeonju Cinema Project ,
- Zsuzsanna Kiràly (Flaneur Films) ,
- Thibault Carterot (M141) and
- Proarti
Technical information
France, South Korea, Germany 2022DCP · 1 : 1.85 · 5.1 Mix ·
With
- Oxmo Puccino and
- Dali Benssalah
Funding provided by
- Jeonju Cinema Project 2020 ,
- Medienboard Experimental Fund ,
- Fondation Antoine de Galbert ,
- Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen ,
- M141 and
- Proarti
Festivals
- Berlinale – Forum ;
- Jeonju International Film Festival – Jeonju Cinema Project 2020 Winner ;
- La Berlinale à Paris, Centre Pompidou ;
- Marienbad International Film Festival ;
- L'Alternativa Independent Film Festival ;
- Lo schermo dell'arte ;
- DocLisboa ;
- Viennale and
- Zinebi, International Festival of Documentary and Short Film of Bilbao
Bio/Filmo Éric Baudelaire
Éric Baudelaire is an artist and filmmaker based in Paris, France. After training as a social scientist, Baudelaire established himself as a visual artist with a research-based practice in several media ranging from printmaking, photography and the moving image to installation, performance and letter writing. His feature films A Flower in the Mouth (2022), When There Is No More Music To Write (2022), Un Film Dramatique (2019), Also Known As Jihadi (2017), Letters to Max (2014), The Ugly One (2013),and The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years Without Images (2011) have circulated widely in film festivals. When shown within exhibitions, the films are presented within broader installations that include curated projects with works in other media and extensive discursive programs. He was the recipient of the 2019 Marcel Duchamp prize, and published a monograph titled Make, Do, With at Paraguay Press in 2023.
- When There Is No More Music to Write, And Other Roman Stories, feature film (2022)
- A Flower in the Mouth, feature film (2022)
- The Glove, short film (2020)
- Un film dramatique, feature film (2019)
- Walked the way Home, short film (2018)
- Also Known as Jihadi, feature film (2017)
- Letters to Max, feature film (2014)
- The Ugly One, feature film (2013)
- The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years without Images, feature film (2011)
- The Makes, short film (2010)
- [sic], short film (2009)
- Sugar Water, feature film (2007)