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

After training as a social-scientist, Eric Baudelaire (1973, Salt Lake City) established himself as a photographer and visual artist with a research-based practice before devoting himself to filmmaking since 2009. His feature films have been programmed widely in film festivals including Locarno, TIFF, NYFF, FID Marseille, Viennale, IFFR, Mar del Plata and FICUNAM. Baudelaire has had monographic exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Tabakalera in San Sebastian, the Fridericianum in Kassel, Witte de With in Rotterdam, the Beirut Art Center, Gasworks in London and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. In 2019 Baudelaire was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Prix Marcel Duchamp.

  • 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)