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 2022
DCP · 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)