Sister Flowers Essay

Does it follow that sister-flowers must embrace their brothers?

Does it follow that sister-flowers must embrace their brothers?

So it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that Eva’s child might have been borne of parthenogenesis, or sisterly cloning, or through communion with a fern, a species whose reproductive strategies Donna Haraway calls a “lovely replicative baroque…

(such nice organic prophylactics against heterosexism).” Into the Forest is realist, however, about the spectacle of male violence that is licensed by the social and cultural hiatus of the collapse of the electrical grid; it’s like watching Nell’s boyfriend Eli (Max Minghella) is a deluded manarchist, convinced he can walk across the continent toward some rumour of surviving ‘civilization’ and not caring whether he splits up the sisterhood in the process.

In the early days of the power outage, they and their father Robert (Callum Keith Rennie) manage to start up the truck and drive into town, but after Robert’s death early on–felled by the same chainsaw he used to start the burnt-out motor – the sisters are all alone in the cedar-shingled Modernist glass box of a house where they grew up.

Yet by the end of the film, they are not: Eva (as her name implies) has a child. Magic realist love stories, full of baroque flourishes and circus tricks, they were fleshed-out Angela Carter or Isabel Allende novels.

She took the religious name Sister Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.

Living a hidden, simple life of prayer, she was gifted with great intimacy with God.

From then on, her powerful energy and sensitive spirit were turned toward love, instead of keeping herself happy.

At 15, she entered the Carmelite convent in Lisieux to give her whole life to God.

Eva conceives non-consensually, but from the moment the assault begins, the rapist is literally cut out of the picture, as the camera focuses on Eva’s face and the sound centers on her breathing.

Once she realizes that she is pregnant, Eva tells Nell that the foetus is hers, and no-one else’s – but as Nell takes on the role of hunter and protector, as well as midwife, it becomes theirs.