LA FLOR (PART 2)

If all of international cinema were a garden, this film would be one of the wildest flowers in bloom. LA FLOR by Mariano Llinás and El Pampero Cine, a collective he co-founded, sprawls into every imaginable genre, evokes the magic of cinema and at once dismantles it, spills over madly during the course of six episodes, and allows itself 14 hours in which to do this. FILMFEST MÜNCHEN is showing these six episodes of LA FLOR in three screenings (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) at two cinemas. The screenings themselves are broken up by 15-minute intermissions, so that you can catch your breath between episodes. Four lead actresses comprise the thread that runs through this large-scale project, appearing again and again in different roles.

LA FLOR (PART 2) shows us the film's pivotal third episode: an espionage thriller, more than five hours long, which takes place in Brussels, Argentina, Berlin, Paris, Bulgaria, and Sweden. Four female secret agents are on a mission to free a Swedish scientist from a rural property in South America and smuggle him out of the country. It's not easy, not least because the agents themselves are in mortal danger — the other side has hired a gang of killers to take them out. A tall stranger pulls the strings in this story, which harks back to the neatly divided world of the Cold War but cheerfully muddles the front lines.