Austin Film Festival Preview: American Cowslip

An American Cowslip is an extraordinarily beautiful, rare flower that can only grow when it’s left totally alone. That’s the best way to think about Ethan Inglebrink, a lovable sweet, naïve, agoraphobic heroin addict with a green thumb, who resides in Blythe, California, a small town seemingly full of nothing but quirky characters. It appears that everyone in town knows him, and he is either loved or hated by all. But the one thing no one can do is leave him alone.

Ethan can’t seem to move out of his childhood home even though everyone in the family is dead or has moved out. He’s on the verge of being evicted, and the only hope he has of making rent is to win the “Garden of the Year” award. But can he overcome his crippling neuroses, his religious zealot of a brother’s interventions, and the insane meddlings of his misanthropic retired coach of a neighbor?

This engagingly bizarre tale by critically-lauded director Mark David (Intoxicating, Sweet Thing) boasts a lot of star power including Diane Ladd, Rip Torn, Cloris Leachman, Val Kilmer, and Peter Falk among others, but the real star here is Texas A&M graduate Ronnie Gene Blevins. As Ethan banters with sweet old ladies (one of which thinks she’s Barbara Streisand—did we use the word “quirky” already?), shoots heroin into his toe, or flirts with the idea of adding pedophilia to his list of vices, it’s hard not to smile at just how darn…well…just how darn adorable the guy is.

It takes a special kind of actor (and indeed, film) to get the audience to root for the junkie, but in this colorful world (both literally and metaphorically—these characters could be the twisted cousins of the Piemaker from Pushing Daisies, everything is as seen through the rose-colored glasses of the perfect high—a thousand times prettier, funnier, weirder, better. And we have to admit, it’s hard not to get caught up in this stubbornly sunny worldview.

American Cowslip appears as part of the Narrative Feature Competition at the Austin Film Festival. The full AFF schedule can be seen here.