Review: Petals on the Wind

10 years after Cathy (Rose McIver), Christopher (Wyatt Nash) and Carrie (Bailey Buntain) escaped the attic, their treacherous mother (Heather Graham), and cold-hearted grandmother (Ellen Burstyn), we follow the kids’ attempt to move on. Cathy goes to New York to become a ballerina, and falls for the tempestuous star Julien (Will Kemp). Christopher studies medicine under doctor Nick Searcy and becomes involved with his sweet, naïve Southern belle daughter (Whitney Hoy). But Cathy and Christopher still find themselves drawn to one another in that way that dare not speak its name. Meanwhile, their young sister Carrie has troubles fitting in at boarding school. All the while Cathy is waiting for her opportunity to get revenge on her grandmother and her mother, the latter by sleeping with her dopey husband (Dylan Bruce).

 

I loathed the botch-job director Deborah Chow and screenwriter Kayla Alpert did to V.C. Andrews’ “Flowers in the Attic”, but since this 2014 TV movie from the same writer was my first experience with “Petals in the Wind” I found the experience better. It still sucks, though, even if like “Flowers” it may well be faithful to the source. Directed this time by Karen Moncrieff (yes, of “The Dead Girl”) one gets the feeling, though, that what we’re getting here is the Cliff notes version, and it all probably plays out better on the printed page. For starters, the film opens at the funeral of a character we’ve never actually met. And later, a car accident and baby revelation come from out of nowhere, feeling rushed. Also, since Ellen Burstyn’s and Heather Graham’s characters were laid so completely exposed by the end of the first film, it leaves this one feeling largely redundant, as I’d feared. Somewhere towards the end of this one, Cathy remarks towards her grandmother; ‘All these years I had nightmares about you. You’re just a pathetic old hag!’. Yes, Cathy, but she was just a pathetic old hag in the previous film as well. That’s the damn problem. Burstyn is a bit better this time around, but her character wasn’t strong enough or frightening enough in the previous film to make her feeble physical appearance here really count for something.

 

As was the case in the previous film, the incest angle is the only thing that works here, and boy do they not shy away from it. Hell, they damn near make Cathy and Christopher seem like normal, well-adjusted human beings…compared to the other freaks in the film. Aside from Burstyn and the woeful Will Kemp, the performances aren’t terrible. In fact, I really liked the work done by Whitney Hoy, as the redheaded Reese Witherspoon-lookalike Southern belle Christopher shacks up with. She’s so sweet you actually feel sorry for the situation she has innocently walked into, in more ways than one. Familiar character actor Nick Searcy is pretty wasted as her doctor father, though.

 

Although not quite as bad as the previous film, this is actually really tedious, clichéd stuff, with Cathy half-heartedly going all “Black Swan” (before the angle is never mentioned again) and young Carrie facing bullying problems at boarding school. Real soap opera stuff, but with incest thrown in, and poorly done. The “Black Swan” stuff is particularly bad because, although Cathy shows herself to be revenge-minded in terms of her mother and grandmother, we are given absolutely no indication that she’d do what she does here to get ahead in the ballet world, and not for one moment did I buy it. Poor Heather Graham, well-cast as she is, has a particularly bad time of it this time around. That’s because the majority of her scenes feel like she’s waiting to get written into the story. The film definitely needed to be longer, or preferably never made at all if this was the best Moncrieff and Alpert could do.

 

I had less of an agonising time with this one, but if I’m being honest, most of that has to do with the fact that I came into this one not having read the book nor has there been any previous film or TV version. It’s still really poorly done all-round, but watch out for Whitney Hoy in the future. She’s got something.

 

Rating: D+