Sydney Speckmann
In Santa Eulalia, there was a decline in jobs and young people, due to the draw of the bigger cities surrounding it. In an effort to combat this, the men of the town put together an excursion to bus in Spanish and Dominican women to their town, all for the prospect of love and the pursuit of keeping the town from withering into obscurity. Of the many women on a particular bus, only two pair up with men from the town, Patricia and Marirossi. Patricia is a Dominican woman with two children, harboring the need to get her papers and to get settled for herself; while Marirossi is a fair-skinned Spanish nurse from Bilbao, a large city in the Basque region of Spain, who is a divorcee searching for love again. Later introduced is Milady, a dark-skinned Cuban woman who is treated as nothing more than a prize that had been won. In Iciar Bollain’s Flowers from Another World, the seasons are used as a temporal marker of the decaying relationships for the three women, displaying the different facets in which the patriarchy harms each of them.
The narrative begins in summer, a time for chances and fresh understandings. The initial scenes with the busful of women have them roaring with laughter and playful jokes, setting a quite happy tone for the film that will later be discarded, once the score has stopped filling the background and once the women's relationships have finally turned sour. Once the women had been loaded off the bus, they stepped through a hallway lined with men's outstretched hands with roses, each of them hopeful to be fancied by some of the women. During this shot sequence, Marirossi is never the sole subject in a shot, she is always framed with another woman from the bus, already incorporating to the visual narrative that she will be a secondary subject of the film. Even when the man that she will end up with, Alfonso, hands her a rose, she is not the sole focus of the shot. In contrast to Patricia, who in this very same sequence does not walk alongside another woman, she is the sole subject in the frame. However, on a closer look, Patricia's eventual husband, Damian, hands Marirossi a rose. This subtly conveys in retrospect, that even though Patricia will be at the core of the narrative, she is second in men's perception in the society of Santa Eulalia. This is furthered to be a belief held by both the men and the women of this town, as the female barkeeper sees no reason for Patricia to be with Damian except to get her documentation. Although this ignorant assumption ends up being the case, she would not have made the same repugnant claims towards Marirossi. Patricia ends up being indoctrinated into a 'nuclear family', so to speak, where she and her two children move into the household of Damian and his mother, Gregoria. Within shots inside of their household, Gregoria is often placed in front of Patricia, and even made to block her at certain times, despite their blatant height difference. Gregoria is not kind to Patricia, and makes outright notions to disinclude her, such as not wanting Patricia's friends to come over, dissatisfaction with her cooking, and overall seeks to set Patricia aside as an 'Other', and to not let her exist and function as a person set within the society of Santa Eulalia (Van Liew). The outward discontent is all to display the transnational subjectivity of the townspeople, and how they have been mono-cultured to see it as nothing but a stain on their reputation.
And with autumn comes change, ever so slowly and yet so apparent in hindsight. This season opens up with a long establishing shot, clouds rolling in, and a tumbleweed idly drifting by. There is nothing new, and there is only the old decaying into something even more mundane. This stagnancy goes to portray Santa Eulalia as a town opposed to every change, with the only exception being time’s passage. In this stagnant and unchanging fall, Carmelo, a middle-aged wealthy Spaniard, imports his dazzling new fiance, Milady. Already raising red flags in the eyes of the Santa Eulalia residents, as this is a change they are so blatantly averse to. As she steps out of the car, she is wearing a bright, revealing outfit, not truly fit for the weather nor the social climate of this small rural town. These costume designs immediately paint her as an outsider, as an “Other” (Rodriguez). The other townspeople adorn plain clothes that blend seamlessly with the set design, and it only further serves to alienate her as someone who they will never let belong. Upon Patricia and Milady's first encounter, Milady asks if it is "always this ugly" in the town, which points us to the fact that Milady will never be tamed by a locale that she does not love in the first place. In this scene, Patricia is in average Santa Eulalia getup, showing that she is slotting well into her place in their society, despite not being accepted. The beginning shots frame Patricia with the town for a backdrop, and angles for Milady have hers as the plain, blue, unbordered sky. There is nothing tying her into the heart of this town, only the pursuit of freedom and something more for her. In contrast, Alfonso and Marirrosi discuss how to save the dismal fate of the town while standing in front of his old, broken home. The notion that Marirossi's presence protects the idea of a fixable home points towards her being more welcomed in their society. Patricia and Milady are never seen as contenders for Santa Eulalia's homecoming, only as hinders, largely due to the locals' distrust of them due to their skin colors. It is plain to see that they do not view the two women as equals, not then, and not now, and certainly not in their future. This speaks largely to the greater Spanish society, and its' rural areas being resistant to change, especially when 'change' comes in the form of transnationality and otherness (Smith).
The winter time only serves to escalate the growing issues within the relationships. Things turn cold, hard, and rocky, quite literally, and the film marks this change with another long, establishing shot of a snowy Santa Eulalia. The season is especially harsh for Milady, who becomes a focal point within its narrative. After going out to Valencia for a night, she returns to Santa Eulalia with a bright smile on her face, only for Carmelo to hit her repeatedly, while Alfonso attempted to stop him. He even went as far as to yell "La voy a matar!", translating to "I'm going to kill her" (Van Liew). In his comfortable place as a racist patriarch within this town, when he goes home, he needn't even confront his own actions or look disgusted with himself; he proceeds as if this is a regular night, having dinner and sitting alone at the dinner table to enjoy it. A set design choice within this scene is the presence of a small television in the corner, playing out a Christmas message from the President of Spain, reinstating the patriarchal methods that the society greater than Santa Eulalia are centered around, and the joys (i.e. Christmas) that supposedly accompanies it. Milady, however, does not get such luxury. A key shot is framed where she looks at herself in the mirror, wiping the blood off her cheek with a rag, and she ends up looking into the camera. This puts us in her shoes, we are wounded, we are feeling her pain alongside her and it is one of the few moments in the film that absolutely makes the viewer corroborate what they have seen and the morality of it all. Carmelo only ever treats Milady as a sexual object, a plaything and a reward, and the viewer must come to terms with it, fully, when Milady looks us in the eyes. Subsequently, the clothing that Milady adorns becomes far more 'tame' and Eulalia-esque, more skin being covered, and more misery in her gaze (Van Liew). She is blatantly treated the worst out of the three women, as Alfonso does not once get violent nor 'primally' upset with Marirossi, and Damian stopped just short of being physical with Patricia. Milady's inherent otherness peers through her character and the residents of Santa Eulalia cannot come to terms with that which they cannot comprehend- although comprehension would imply that they actively act to accomplish understanding, which is far from their methods. Damian, on the other hand, screams and shouts and yells at Patricia once he finds out about her estranged husband back from the Dominican Republic, and in his fit of anger, he tells Patricia to leave and not return, but eventually he stops her in the nick of time. He gives her an apology, and she does for him too- something Milady did not even get the chance to offer before Carmelo decided to get physical with her. This only furthers the notion that there is a distinct hierarchy to which these women get treated, and how the system has ingrained that into the subjectivity of their small, little town.
And with growing flower buds and leaves coming back in full, springtime brings the three relationships to their closures. Patricia's daughter gets baptized, now fully inundating her to the Christian patriarchal society that has been brewing around the family for so long, confirming their place as others who are now completely where they will stay. At the baptism, Patricia adorns a bright, flowy red dress, the color being a notion to her fertility along with the baby bump clearly visible in her shadow. Her relationship is the only one to end with them together still, signifying that subduing oneself' to the patriarchy is the only method in which a woman can operate with autonomy in this society, regardless of how much it may have been a marriage of convenience (Rodriguez). Marirossi gave up on Alfonso, as his unwillingness to make compromise ultimately drove them to the ground, just as she was driven away in the film's final shot of her. She had the luxury to do such a thing, as a nurse from Bilbao who was by no means dependent on what he could for her, and the things he could provide for her. Lastly, Milady had to run away, for she would not have been able to end things peacefully with Carmelo, it is clear that he would've gotten violent with her again, a cruel reality. And the spring brings closure, just as it brings life into this cinema, and the narrative has fully ended- each of the women certainly not better off than before.
And the near-epilogue of the story comes, driving in in the form of a busload of women, proving that this vicious cycle is as unchanging and permanent as the seasons themself. Flowers from Another World consistently demonstrates the lack of contentedness for purely "Othered" women under the patriarchal system, and how, at the end of that dark tunnel, the only solution is to run from it, as Milady did, or to inundate yourself into society by way of the masculinely idealized heterosexual nuclear family, as Patricia did. Marirossi was able to step away from Alfonso due to her not being financially dependent nor legally dependent on their relationship, and she existed in leagues of privilege above the other women, all due to her 'whiteness' and likening to be hispanic in culture. This film struggles to truly critique these societal ordinances, and instead accepts them at face value. A constant in this film, just as the seasons passing within it, and around us.