A journey through grief transforms into a psychotropic, psychedelic voyage through alternate realities in director/co-writer Yannis Veslemes‘s surreal genre-defier. Three Greek brothers (Aris Balis, Panos Papadopoulos, and Julio Katsis) build and experiment with a unique time machine in the hopes of bringing their mother back from the dead. The brothers have practically hermited themselves away with their grief as they experiment with various flora and fauna to test their machine, though it manifests in ways that are as different as their personalities. It’s those warring personalities and the inclusion of hedonism and mind-altering substances that send the men on a bizarre, reality-altering odyssey.
Veslemes, who co-wrote with Dimitris Emmanouilidis, forgoes conventional narratives in favor of a tactile mood piece that leans into the psychotronic. The debut filmmaker delivers a collision of DIY techniques that transforms She Loved Blossoms More into an arresting, vibrant realm of practical effects-driven creatures and ruined experiments. There’s an emphasis on the surreal here as the brothers drift through time and reality, often to comical effect. But that also means that it’s the type of weird cinema that demands you get on its peculiar wavelength; there’s not much in the way of story or characters to grab hold of here. It’s a sumptuous visual feast that hones in on the strangeness of mourning, nothing more or less.