The Rose King

“If two children kiss before they can speak, one of them will die.”

Anna (Magdalena Montezuma), a woman whose grip on the world is loosening, moves with her son Albert (Mostefa Djadjam) into a large mansion in Portugal, where the two of them mean to grow roses. Werner Schroeter fills the house with sun and slow time, and a friend, Fernando (Antonio Orlando), and a woman come into their orbit. What the film circles is how closely a mother and son can be bound, and how little of that they can choose.