Medem’s previous book-lenght work, Cenit, also explored the parallel relationships between two people, and between the people and their environment, comprehending everything: landscape, food, weather, living creatures, and so on. However, Flor shores up these alliances.
The storyline is quite ambiguous and, from the standpoint of classical narratology, incomplete. We find ourselves in a village apparently emptied of all the inhabitants, except for Antonia. In fact, all the surrounding villages seem desolate too. We are never given an explanation why. This is not within the purview of Medem’s storytelling, however. There are no science fiction tropes here. We find ourselves simply with Antonia in this barren landscape. One could perhaps argue that this may mirror in some way the abandonment of rural areas in Spain, the so-called “rural flight”, associated as well to the plight of a younger generation with little economic prospects and precarity as a rule. But even though a social reading of Por culpa de una flor may be possible, I do not feel the author is interested in such a reductive interpretation.
This is a not a fantasy book either, but there are slightly fantastical elements to it. “Magical realism” could be a way to put it, but that also feels to me an easy way out of looking closely. In any case, Antonia is not totally alone, nor is she desperate, as she finds solace in the routine of tolling the bells, feeding the dogs and, more importantly, sense the presence of a singular, magnificent and chimerical flower. There are no scenes translating visually the powers of the flower, but through the hovering captions by Antonia we understand that the flower instills in her a good, nostalgic feeling, transporting her to a previous time of companionship and community. This nostalgia invites her, and us, to a deep, yet calm reflective attitude.
This life, between Antonia, her chores and the flower, seem to be autosufficient. But one days come when Manuela arrives, opening up the possibility for Antonia to travel, walk away, expand her horizons, as it were, and reconnect with life in a different manner, with actual humans around her. An adventures ensues, and there are many “episodes” that could be described, almost as set scenes, but this would not undermine the way that Medem threads these events, in a determinately calculated, placid manner.
Medem’s variety of comics-making is closer to that which has been called, in cinema theory, as slow cinema. According to Jonathan Romney, slow cinema, and in that very same sense, slow comics, can be seen as a “varied strain of austere minimalist” storytelling “that downplays event in favour of mood, evocativeness and an intensified sense of temporality.” As of course, it is always dangerous to create such straightforward analogies, given the fact that slow cinema’s propensity for, for instance, prolonged, intense, uneventful long takes finds little traction in Medem’s most busy, puzzle-like pages, but the latter cannot be seen, at all, as the equivalent to a quick succession of short shots of different objects in a movie. Quite in fact, Medem’s composition skills, even in these fuller, more varied pages, invites the reader to slow down, to take in the profound sensations at stake, to create new, stronger and more intimate bonds between the characters, objects and ambients.
When Antonia meets Manuela, for instance, we have a sequence of four pages translating the inner feelings of the protagonist. First, she hears Manuela’s voice. After a while, she will feel Manuela’s fingers on her back. In the meantime, we are able to see her pupils dilating, her perspiration, and abstract images that probably “translate” her sudden, self-conscious detachment, her auditory feelings, and the way she insulates Manuela’s touching her back in a singular point of pressure and connection. Narratively speaking, it couldn’t be more focused – the touch of two, three fingers of someone else on one’s own back – but Medem opens it up (like a flower, blooming) into multiple visual planes. While one could quote the trippy, psychadelic pop graphics of the late 1960s and 1970s, including in some comics-making realms (the Losfeld-associated projects, for instance), I think that her sense of design of the page is very reminiscent, for me at least, albeit from a wholly different realm, of George Hardie’s work. There is the same dramatic sense of looking askew at an object, isolating a part of the whole by exaggerated close-ups, infusing the surrounding color in a non-natural way, and creating significant patterns out of either quasi-repetitions of panels, offsetting its minute variations, or quite the contrary by highly contrasting images. Also, the crossing between naturally represented objects and highly stylized geometric forms enhances the feelings elicited by the overall image.
Yet another level of meaning-making in Por culpa de una flor is its aptitude for synesthesia. It’s arguable if comics’ capacity of engaging with several media and modes of feeling would include outright the senses of smell and sound (see Ian Hague’s work for strong arguments in favour, namely from comics’s own materiality, which always have a role, of course, but moreso in this volume). It is also arguable if the suggestive power of words – quick, think of pink butterflies! – ellicits the same feelings as the “real thing” (whatever that may be). Having said that, the fact is that time and again, there are mentions, both verbally and visually, to the smells and sounds of the nature around the characters, creating a dense atmosphere, and placing us right at the center of the protagonist’s bodily comfort and experience. Thre is also a very intense intertextual relationship with flamenco, but it’s beyond my expertise to analyse that.
One las word about the materiality of the book. This is a thick volume, with more than 330 pages, with an outstanding sewn quires finish. Its cover is a solid black, beautifully cut through by the white, Art Nouveau-like fonts, and the titular flower, with its bold, flat colors for each of its parts. The pages themselves are colored in different colors and hues throughout, more or less following the time of day, from the bright yellows or greens of the Summer day, the heavier tones of purple or oranges of dusk to the dark blues of night. Medem uses strong colors for each of the objects, almost after a primer book fashion – “the lake”, “the tomato”, “the dog” – to underline their very presence as objects. Nonetheless, she also employs grainy gradients in a very contemporaneous way, allied to her almost liquid shapes, making the book’s edges a caleidoscopic wonder. I find it abhorrent when people try to reduce colors to dictionary-ready interpretations, but there can be no doubt that Medem does attempt to rouse various feelings and dispositions in the readers by constantly shifting the color patterns.
Even though there is a “story,” and it is quite feasible to offer up a clearcut synopsis of it, to do so would rob the reader of the real experience of plunging into the visual splendor of the book and the waves of meaning, at one time denied as a whole but stirring in its promises. Like a perfume we sense but are not sure where it comes from. And happily renounce from knowing, and breathe in, intensely.
Yellow Fast & Crumble 
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