The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Review: The Most Dramatically Beautiful Series of The Year on Prime Video
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Alyla Browne, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Charlie Vickers, Alycia Debnam-Carey
Creator: Glendyn Ivin
Streaming Platform: Prime Video
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars)
On August 4, on Prime Video, the first three episodes of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart out of seven (the others will be released one at a time every Friday until the epilogue on September 1). If you are looking for a quick review, let’s say right away that The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a tragically dramatic series, that the protagonist is the magnificent Sigourney Weaver, and that the title Flowers are a reference to the extraordinary importance that Australia’s nature has in the series. If you have a little more time, continue reading the next lines in which we summarize briefly and without spoilers the plot of this series that we had the honor of previewing entirely.
A perfect series is coming to Prime Video for lovers of strong emotions, of those enthralling dramas in which the resolution of a mystery is functional to the development of the plot, for those who want to discover distant “worlds” of unspoiled nature, and above all for those looking for an all-female story, made up of indissoluble family ties, but also of buried secrets and traumas. As we will see in this review of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, the series directed by Glendyn Ivin and based on Holly Ringland’s debut novel The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart brings all these elements together, telling an immediately extremely touching story, in a family is forced to come to terms with their past. Leading the excellent cast, almost all female is a splendid Sigourney Weaver in the role of a mysterious and manipulative matriarch.
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Review: The Story Plot
Alice Hart (Alyla Browne) is a vivacious little girl who lives in the Australian countryside, along with dad Clem (Charlie Vickers) and mum Agnes (Tilda Cobham-Hervey). She is curious, loves to read, and shares a passion for ancient legends with her mother. However, the illusion of a peaceful family life hides a brutal truth: an existence of fear, ill-concealed bruises, and impotence. A reality of captivity with no apparent escape routes. When a mysterious fire kills both of her parents, nine-year-old Alice moves in with her paternal grandmother June Hart (Sigourney Weaver) at Thornfield flower farm, a farm, and place of refuge for lonely and troubled women.
Here the little girl grows up, spending her childhood and adolescence learning the names and meanings of the wildflowers and plants that surround her. Wrapped in the warm affection of her grandmother, her partner Twig (Leah Purcell), and the other working women of Thornfield. But the past, with its ghosts and her unsaid, still holds the promise of inexhaustible torment. And between corrosive silences and denied truths, Alice, who has become an adult (Alycia Debnam Carey), will have to learn to deal with the thousand faces of “smiling” violence that seems to haunt her family.
At the center of the plot, we find the young Alice Hart (Alyla Browne), a little girl who lives in a rural corner of Australia with her parents. The existence of the little girl, in contact with nature and punctuated by the stories told by her mother Agnes (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), is perfect, but hides a dark side: her father Clem (Charlie Vickers) is violent and sometimes cruel, in fact from being extremely affectionate to the most extreme and explosive rage. One day Alice’s life will be completely devastated by a sudden accident, and the little girl will go to live with her grandmother June (Sigourney Weaver), whom she had never known. The woman is at the helm of Thornfield Flower Farm, where all the beautiful varieties of Australian flowers are grown; together with her, a team of women who have found refuge against male cruelty in Thornfield, have all escaped from violent and abusive relationships.
Together with her grandmother, Alice learns the secret language of flowers, which the women of the Hart family have kept for generations, and which allows her to communicate even without words. The trauma of what happened to her parents affected the child so much that it prevented her from speaking; for a long time, Alice would express herself only with writing and with the language of flowers. Over time, growing up, Alice will realize that her beloved grandmother hides numerous secrets, linked to the family’s past and which, if they came to light about her, could hurt her and irreparably change their relationship…
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Review and Analysis
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. Title and advice, invitation. Access key to a world that falls from the very first moments, when the carefree idyll of a fake hug turns into the terror of a cold and implacable gaze. A house, indeed, more houses of horrors inhabit the life of Alice Hart; not antiquated abodes filled with evil spirits but latticed – in some ways The Haunting of Hill House – of memories, guilt, and darkness. More than anything else geographical, architectural horror styles, grafted onto a dramatic canvas that is also usual, along the trace of which domestic violence and reflection on it continue to intersect, reinforcing each other.
How long can abuse last? And at what point does the desire for protection mutate and degenerate into manipulation and control? Glendyn Ivin questions the viewer using a product that speaks multiple languages; she does it through an organic polyglotism which, to accompany the spectator in the weary path of “rehabilitation” of her protagonists, mixes the exoticism of the myth with the symbolism of the floral language, the power of shocked silence with the urgency of the cry of complaint. However, within a labyrinth of suggestions and revelations within which, on more than one occasion, Ivin sometimes seems wary of his audience – or of himself? -, incurring an excessively “screamed” didacticism, which paradoxically ends up dampening the force and scope of the message.
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart finds its “sun” in the body and face of Sigourney Weaver, the June Hart to whom the star born in 1949 lends her talent – third mini-serial declination after the experiences of Political Animals (2012) and The Defenders (2017) – and which represents the polar star of the show, the undisputed narrative and acting point of reference. June’s painful obstinacy revives the rough sweetness that for decades has been mapping the diva’s interpretative trajectories, an icon shaped over the years by the hands of the great masters Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and, more recently, Paul Schrader (Master Gardener, again a garden and its intrigues). Here wrinkles and wounds gradually become more and more evident, and the woman’s gaze is enriched with nuances of intensity; the wide-brimmed cowboy hat makes his bearing wild and every detail, an indispensable piece of the puzzle, fills the shot with unparalleled class and elegance – despite the brilliant performances by Leah Purcell and Alycia Debnam Carey.
To impoverish then the potential of the compelling literary counterpart are stranded problems of a structural nature. More or less predictable passages or with a little original staging, soap opera junctures and cliffhangers, and, in particular, a constant sensation of watering down the material, stretched, at least at times, like butter spread on too much bread. Considering the different temporal and narrative levels involved, the product would perhaps have benefited from a different distribution format, why not a feature film “in chapters”, which knew how to preserve the most interesting elements of the plot and combine them with a more impactful and less dispersive?
The first thing that strikes you about The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is the performances of its large cast, led by a fierce and complex Sigourney Weaver. Together with her, an all-female microcosm that brings all the nuances of trauma to the stage: some have lost a child, those who have run away from an abusive husband, those who have been abandoned, and those who believe they are responsible for the death of their loved one. Little Alyla Browne also stands out in the role of Alice (as a child, as an adult she will be played by the equally ethereal Alycia Debnam-Carey), extremely expressive even in her imposed silence.
Another particularly apt element of the series is certainly it’s setting, capable of conveying the atmospheres suitable for a story of this kind. The locations are perfect to represent the strong feelings experienced by the characters: we have unspoiled nature made of sun-scorched lands, stormy seas, and June’s estate, covered in every corner of her flowers. The house where the woman lives with her family is truly splendid, where the flowers return as wooden sculptures and as decorations in the fabrics and clothes of her inhabitants. A constant presence symbols the strong bond of this family not only with flowers but also with the territory. The atmosphere evoked by this story is magical and almost set in a distant time, made up of contact with nature and simple life, but also strong and violent emotions. The psychological insight of the protagonists is well done, and the dark tale of June and Alice, but also of Agnes and all the women who have lived in Thornfield, is fascinating and engaging precisely because of how we get to know all these characters, their dreams, and hopes, but also their fears and the terrible traumas that condition their existence.
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Review: The Last Words
The series based on the novel by Holly Ringland is a splendid all-female, enthralling, and engaging story. The cast is excellent, especially Sigourney Weaver as a fierce and protective matriarch. The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart makes for a series of drama matched only by its beauty, and the cast – led by Sigourney Weaver and featuring Asher Keddie (Sally Morgan), Leah Purcell (Twig North), Frankie Adams (Candy Blue) and Alycia Debnam -Carey (Alice Hart) – provides an ensemble rehearsal so intense it makes you want to applaud them all in front of the TV. Provided, as mentioned, that you have the strength to follow such a story.
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Review: The Most Dramatically Beautiful Series of The Year on Prime Video - Filmyhype
Director: Glendyn Ivin
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:37
4
Pros
- Beautiful cinematography
- Sensitive and nuanced exploration of trauma, abuse, and healing
- Strong performances from the cast, especially Sigourney Weaver and Abbie Cornish
Cons
- The series can be slow-paced at times
- Some of the plot twists are predictable
