Confessions
of a Florist, written and directed by Frank
Patterson, takes place in a small Southern town not far
from Atlanta.
Rose (played by Leslie France) has bludgeoned her husband
Dan (played by Marco Perella) to death with a vase in a
fit of rage after seeing him have sex with a slut in her
florist shop one night. A traveling salesperson, dealing
in used cars, Dan is away from Rose a lot, and he stingily
refuses to provide funds so that she can keep up with the
bills of her shop. She stashes his body in the cooler,
the place where flowers are kept so that they retain their
freshness, but cannot bring herself to inform the authorities
of her misdeed. Along comes Willyum (played by Wayne DeHart),
who has been released from prison after serving a sentence
of about eight years for shooting in self-defense the irate
husband of a woman with whom he was having extramarital
sex. In both cases, the murderers are victims of societal
discrimination. Rose recalls that her husband abused her
because of her sex, and Willyum believes that his conviction
was railroaded because he is African American. Others in
the story exhibit unabashed sexist and racist prejudices,
with appropriate Southern accents. Willyum comes into the
flower shop to buy a bouquet so that he will be accepted
by his wife (played by Tonea Stewart), who later rejects
his overture and throws the bouquet at him. Willyum then
returns to the flower shop with his sad story. Rose, suggesting
that he should try again, hires him to help to prepare
flowers for the upcoming Valentine's Day, which is a high
point in sales for any florist business. While he is working
for her, she confesses that she is a murderer. He urges
her to inform the police lest he return to the penitentiary
as an accomplice, but she lacks the courage to do so. Meanwhile,
her shop is to be foreclosed. The town undertaker, Martinez
(played by Bill Bolender), owes her a princely sum that
would enable her to avoid foreclosure, but he refuses to
help. One day Rose spies a coffin with a trap bottom, realizing
that Martinez has been selling the same coffin for years.
Taking advantage of her knowledge of his fraud, she coerces
him into disposing of her husband's body. The shop is nevertheless
foreclosed. Meanwhile, Willyum finally get his wife to
take him back in. In the end, Rose drives out of town,
bound presumably for her hometown of Lodi, New Jersey.
Confession of a Florist is a
story with some similarity to Far
from Heaven (2002), in which a white
woman and a black man help each other to achieve some authenticity
to their lives despite social prejudice. The main difference
is that Rose leaves town, while Willyum stays with his
wife. MH
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