Editor’s Note
The night that Mariano Llinás arrived in Locarno, I ran into him drinking with his producer Laura Citarella and a few friends, occupying a few tables in a streetside café. Soon after I joined them, I asked Llinás the most pressing question in my mind about his 14-hour La Flor: “What’s the deal with Canada?”
Allow me to explain. At the start of, a mini-revolt by the four actresses—who by this point are very familiar faces to the viewer—is in progress. Having worked six years on the film , they aren’t about to tolerate the director parachuting in a new producer, nor are they pleased with the fact that they haven’t been given a script, nor do they like their characters and costumes: a native, two Mounties, and a bearded woodcutter, visions of Canadiana literally derived from a children’s encyclopedia. But, in truth, the director would rather just be shooting trees. About half an hour later, the film ends up at, as the onscreen text reveals, “Kashwakamak Lake. Québec. Dominion of Canada,” for what amounts to the drop of a petal in the grander context of . (Note: Kashwakmak Lake does in fact exist, though it is in Ontario, not Québec. Alas, it would not even have been part of Lower Canada, as it is west of the Ottawa River.)
