World premieres are always quite thrilling. With the audience interested but not looking forward to the film, there is a certain excitement present at the screening. It does not matter if it is cast, the money involved, the distributors or the story itself, no one really has an idea. This is no different for Lilies Not For Me, the first feature length film made by Will Seefried.
The film is biographical in nature, as it depicts the life of two young men in 1920s English society and their coming to terms with their sexual orientation. However, things do get quite interesting eventually when one of them manages to find a way out.
The film starts with Owen James (Normal People starring Fionn O’Shea) deciding to write a book in the beautiful English countryside. Because of time, the protagonist is later joined by his friend Philip (Robert Aramayo) who is clearly after Owen’s desires as much as his blooming lilies in the garden. Such a scene is rather deceptively appealing, as one begins to believe they are in a novel from the early 19th/late 20th century, somewhat similar to the last novel by E. M. Forster, ‘Maurice’.
Owen’s character, like several others throughout the film, becomes active when the storyline transitions into the summer and the audience learns that he attends the psychiatric hospital just like Francis Scott Keyes does. For some time, he is able to cherish beautiful and free-of-society-to-order memories with beautiful Phillip; but Owen’s time as an adolescent draws to a close. At this very point the audience is placed back in the present as Owen is already at a psychiatric hospital, placed in a dreary world where the only privacy is the tenement who dropped him this time without any trace of his facade.
The key focus of the film is the repulsive historical events that underline Owen’s experience; he is bound to live through war times and while being brought there, enduring the consequences with little relief in between. All of this trespassing is illustrated through stunning personal storytelling making the heart grabbingly real. It allows me, the viewer, to be constantly amazed by how two elements of disruption contrast.
Sennett Sreveed effortlessly illustrates the time of alienation, inner darkness and bonds between people in the past – forever being supportive, sacrificing everything but themselves and resisting harm, in any shape.
With a very good script and direction, as may be the case, Lilies Not For Me would simply have been impossible without the right cast. Taking on the role of the leading character, Fionn O’Shea is simply incredible and shy in an almost natural way. The actor perfectly reproduces the self-issues that so many homosexual men of that time dealt with, which when Owen blooms, becomes more subliminal for the audience. Equally so, Aramayo more than delivers as Owen’s counterpart. Aramayo’s ascent into character is not like any flower, but a dying rose that has lived and lost its beauty.
The two men do not have good chemistry together, but rather in parts where Finn is throughout the film, he makes up with chemistry with all the other actors. A lack of this kind of chemistry can make the love scenes seem very fake and overdone, yet it adds a certain sleaziness to those love scenes. In this way, however, what this enables is the increasing scope of the film’s much darker sequences.
En el día en que los intereses gay eran vistas con desdén y maldición, Seefried con gran ingenio logra al menos en parte explicar por qué el horror se perpetuó. En palabras de la actriz queer: “yardas de historia de quejas se convirtieron en un par de horas que es lo que quiero enfatizar”. En su filme, la historia se transforma cuando deja de ser una historia vendida con dolor para convertirse en un delicado y critico relato de tentativas y promesas. The story is told through Berthe Parsot’s niece and cousin, who travel to Paris for the first time. They are students at a prestigious art school looking to visit where their family came from many decades ago. It should come as no surprise that this film leans more towards lighter tones and textures when touching upon feminism. After all, this film is described by its director in the following terms: “it’s not that I stepped out of the frame, it’s that the entire frame transformed.” This critique drives many scenes in the film whereby through strong visuals Femme as a character slowly becomes blurred in the eyes of the audience.
This is how I would put it. They say that not all films are worth watching. This particular picture is a blessing, though it is not without its unreasonable faults. By the time the final credit rolls, any shortcomings have long ago been viewed as still moments and are forgotten. This picture combines repression and desire, and hope and despair at the same time, it is as if The Remains of the Day met Call Me By Your Name. Unfortunately, many people would not have seen films all their lives therefore this film will be absolutely unique for them and is likely to cause a wave of ecstasy.
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