Lilies Not For Me is a gut-wrenching drama that revisits a neglected, dark period in queer history through the hazy lens of a complex love triangle.
Director: Will Seefried
Genre: Drama, Romance
Run Time: 99′
Edinburgh Premiere: August 16, 2024
While queer stories are thankfully becoming more and more common as the cinema industry shines a light on long-forgotten stories of love and loss, there are some dark corners of history that are rarely told, because they hold narratives too shameful to think about.
Lilies Not For Me, however, doesn’t shy away from the truth of the queer experience in the early 20th century, following three young men as their intertwined lives paint a harrowing portrait of love, loss, and self-rejection.
Lilies Not For Me shares its story between two timelines – in the first, Owen James (Fionn O’Shea) is an aspiring novelist living in the English countryside, when his old friend Philip (Robert Aramayo) pays him a visit, promising to be able to ‘cure’ him of his sexuality. From there, the film jumps back and forth between this past and the present, where Owen is being ‘converted’ of his homosexuality in a facility. The two timelines often mirror each other, both visually and thematically, showing the cyclical nature of Owen’s journey and displaying just how self-perpetuating this contemporary hatred and suppression was. It’s a devastating story, devoid of hope, using bleakness and cynicism as a vehicle to make the audience share in these two men’s suffering.
What’s most striking about Lilies Not For Me is how it uses its characters to display this social tragedy from three different perspectives. They are all victims in their own rights, but their conflicting ideologies often bring them in conflict with each other. The film catches each character at a different point in their respective journeys – Owen is hopeful and dreams of a future where he can be himself, while Philip spends every moment wishing he could be somebody else. It’s a tragic story that truly submerges the audience in its characters’ pain, with several blood-curdling scenes that very clearly display the amount of suffering that these men were subjected to.
Cinematically, Lilies Not For Me is a knockout. The luscious landscapes of England’s countryside are shot, framed, and lit beautifully by director Will Seefried, with this dreamlike imagery painting a powerful contrast with the film’s actual content. It will be hard to find a more picturesque film at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival – every single frame is doused in warm colours and powerful symbolism that keeps the audience hooked from start to finish. There are moments when the story is a little slow-paced, specifically at the beginning of the film, but it’s the great cinematography that compensates for that. Once the story really picks up, and the two narratives start interweaving with purpose, it flies by; before that, Lilies Not For Me admittedly lacks direction for a while.
Although moments of this story feel somewhat scattered and lacking in structure, the pure horror of what’s happening on-screen is more than enough to make up for it. But it’s never disturbing just for shock value – the screenplay is extremely rich and thought-provoking, using the horrors of this period to dissect our own social values and apply them to the world we live in today. It’s for that reason that Lilies Not For Me can so confidently be labelled as a ‘must-watch’ from this year’s festival. It’s a story that begs not only to be watched, but to be felt, and it accomplishes that through tender direction, multi-faceted characters, and two absolutely show-stopping performances from O’Shea and Araymayo.
Lilies Not For Me was screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival on August 16, 2024.
