Well that was certainly weird. There's a lot of positives about Flourish, starting with the whole reason I saw it, Jennifer Morrison, and her House, M.D. co-star Jesse Spencer in a karate gi. But really mostly Jennifer Morrison. And given developments on House, it may have been my last chance to see her. Jennifer Morrison is brilliant as Gabrielle Winters, a woman who lost a teenager she was babysitting, being interviewed in a clinical setting and spinning a bizarre tale to explain what happened, showing he has a tenuous grasp on her faculties at the best of times, telling a story that shows her moving through an evening piecing her own life and identity together moment by moment from snatches of lucidity and whatever facts she can glean from hazy memories. Morrison's frenetic character Gabby is unable to keep words and concepts straight from sentence to sentence (dropping her coffee and looking for the car keys then asking her roommate for the coffee keys), and it's both funny and intriguing to watch the impossibility of communication with Gabby. Some of the mystery that hangs over the film is worthwhile, like wondering how the fractured Gabby can have stable relationships with other people like her rooommate, and why someone would trust her to care for their child. It really calls into question whether she was always like this, and Gabby gives some reason to believe she had a sharp mental break that caused her to be like this.
The story within the story, her recollection of what happened That Night proceeds in a linear fashion cutting between multiple characters and locations, a bizarre plot involving spycraft, rogue teenagers, adultery, dead bodies, and a feverish man with a karate gi and a gun. It's grounded enough that the reliability of Gabby as a narrator doesn't come into question until the end. The interviewer points out several problems we should have had with Gabby's story, like the parts she didn't witness, and the fact that he's in it. Everybody in the entire story seems very confused about what they're doing, and why, and inventively bridges the gaps between intentions and reality the same way Gabby does, which means it's impossible to be sure to what degree they're real people, and to what degree an extension of her imagination. Gabby can't find her car keys, and outside a car thief can't figure out how to start her car, she hitches a ride but the driver can't take her where she's going or explain why... when she tells the story everybody seems to share her problem with transportation. On some level this is fascinating, but after twenty minutes of searching, I really just wanted her to find her car keys. After an hour and a half, I just wanted one person to know where they were and what they were doing.
Flourish doesn't come to a satisfactory resolution of any subplot, so it's a hard slog, and other than Gabby, none of the characters are people I really wanted to know more about anyways. So good for Jennifer Morrison, not so good for the audience.
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