FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC

Some years ago, Corrine got married to the man of her dreams, provoking her parents’ anger to cut her out of their will – it was happiness among adversity. Now that she ends up being a widow with her four children, misfortune strikes, and it’s still adversity: no money, no job… and no other choice than seeking refuge in her father’s property. She is welcomed very coldly by her mother, who hurries to hide the kids from the bad-tempered father: if he comes to find out that his daughter, finally “done” with her good-for-nothing husband, has on top of that (!!) four children, he might definitively clear her, of the house and of her rights! Corrine chooses to find a job in Charlottesville and to let her mother get custody of her troublesome children – Chris, Cathy, Laurie and Cory. Something that Grandmother does not accept happily: sadistic and sanctimonious, she hastens to hide those “sins” in the attic. The children are put in the hands of a real tyrant, confined in their attic-jail, under the permanent surveillance of a silent and threatening guard: if they ever tried to escape, they would have to cross the garden, the hunting ground of an enormous bloody Doberman…
The kids’ only joyful moments are when they are given caster-sugar-sprinkled “cookies”, served with their grub, and when Corrine visits them, every time more beautiful with a better outfit, who promises them that she will soon take them away. Soon. But the visits start to be less frequent, and the four flowers of the attic perish…
From an American best-seller by V.C. ANDREWS, Flowers in the Attic was adapted and directed by the screenwriter (Farewell, My Lovely) and filmmaker (The Stick Up) Jeffrey BLOOM. This tragedy with a fantasy and unhealthy atmosphere, very close to the poisonous The Innocents, was a real hit in the US and is supremely played by Louise FLETCHER (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Strange Invaders, The Lady in Red, Brainstorm…) as the devil grandmother, and Victoria TENANT (The Holcroft Covenant, All of Me, Best Seller) as Corrine, a rather greedy than loving mother.