Review of The Flowers of War (2011) by Elian D — 22 Sep 2013

Very delicate subject treated with a very precise balance (most of the time - more about that below) to show the horrors of war without turning the film into a gorefest.

I have only two observations:

1) There's no way to explain this if you're not watching it, but in the church-rape scene, the Japanese soldiers look so ridiculous that they almost look funny, which makes it uncomfortable to watch: the horror of what is happening gets undermined by the actors' attitude.

2) the main character almost has no development: he's the stereotypical drunk, oblivious foreigner and then, he's a nice guy. And he shaves. That's it. You don't actually see development, he just turns. You could argue there's a trigger for that, but he's basically still the same drunk after the "trigger", and then he shaves and he's "the hero they need and deserve".

Now, those may sound like serious problems for a film, but if you watch the whole picture you'll notice that everything else is so nicely done that it reaches its objective and says what it wants to say.

Again: it is a hard film to watch, but it's worth it.