‘Florist’ may be clever, but it wilts fast

In the dark comedy “Confessions of a Florist,” a man enters a small-town Florida flower shop a day before Valentine’s Day. Wayne DeHart’s Willyum has just finished paying dearly for a past transgression and hopes some flowers will help win back his wife. The florist, Rose (Leslie France), on the other hand, has just committed an equally serious transgression of her own. Events swiftly develop so that these two strangers must depend upon each other if either is to make a fresh start in life.

Writer-director Frank Patterson cleverly establishes his premise and develops it with some imaginative plotting, deftly navigating a minefield of dubious morality. Unfortunately, despite winning portrayals from DeHart and France, the film suffers the two most familiar curses of low-budget regional filmmaking: a slack pace and too many cutesy-poo, caricatured secondary characters brought in for trite comic relief. (The exception: a crusty elderly Southern woman played spot-on by Sylvia Miles, not the most likely casting but an excellent choice after all.) Patterson is on solid ground as long as he focuses on the capable and ingratiating DeHart and France, for whom the film serves as a good showcase, but most of the other characters are not written with enough freshness and dimension to allow the stars to lift the film above such shortcomings.

“Confessions of a Florist” adds up to no more than a decidedly minor film, amusing in places, inventive in others, that is more appropriate as a video rental than as a theatrical release.

*

‘Confessions of a Florist’

MPAA rating: Unrated.

Times guidelines: Adult themes.

Leslie France...Rose

Wayne DeHart...Willyum

Sylvia Miles...Mrs. P.

Marco Perella...Dan

Glenn Shadix...Sheriff

An RGH Lions Share Pictures presentation of an Everything’s Roses Ltd. Production. Writer-director Frank Patterson. Producer Karchi Pearlmann. Executive producers Darryl Hagman and Robert Montgomery Jr. Cinematographer Tom Callaway. Production designer Jed Kaleko. Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes.

Exclusively at the Playhouse 7, 673 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 844-6500.