Mike McCahill 

Day of the Flowers – review

This film imagines Scotland and Cuba renewing their socialist bonds in blandly literal terms by having Eva Birthistle fall for Carlos Acosta, writes Mike McCahill
  
  

Day of the Flowers
Pan-Cuban mooning … Day of the Flowers Photograph: PR

This feels like a Ken Loach film that's had its politics dialled back by producers keen to retain the centre ground. Eva Birthistle (from Loach's Ae Fond Kiss …) is the Scots lass who gets one scene establishing her anti-capitalist credentials before she's whisked to Cuba to scatter her father's ashes. The journey is meant as a renewal of the countries' socialist bonds, but the script conceives this process in blandly literal terms by having Birthistle fall for local hunk Carlos Acosta. The pair's pan-Cuban pan-Cuban mooning occasions mucho guitar-strumming, yet nothing much catches fire: lame gags and supporting turns ensure it concludes closer to Mamma Mia! than Marx.

 

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