FIOR DI LATTE (CHARLOTTE ERCOLI, 2025)
HEIDECKER MEETS PROUST! - Step into a magical world of scent, memory, and laughs in Charlotte Ercoli’s Debut Feature!
Mark Van Bloom, played by Tim Heidecker, is stuck. He’s stuck in a rut of writer’s block, rejection, clutter and misery. He has only one escape - huffing memories.
Heidecker as Mark Van Bloom
While on a trip to Italy to buy rare toys, Mark meets Francesca, played by Marta Pozzan, a beautiful young aspiring playwright. Flashbacks throughout the film show Francesca and her family touring Mark around, showing him a good time. A romance begins to blossom between the two, and she gets him to buy a perfume called Fior Di Latte. When attempting to stuff it in his bag, the perfume bottle breaks and covers his clothes in the scent.
He has the holiday of a lifetime and tells Francesca she should join him in New York. Time passes, and we see Francesca living with Mark in his apartment, which is gross and filled with movie memorabilia from a bygone era. His collectables aren’t the only thing keeping Mark in the past; Francesca has grown tired of Mark and his immature slovenly ways. He’s suffering with writers block, he’s jealous of Francesca’s success and is being left behind by his contemporaries. To combat his feelings of insecurity he sniffs the clothes soaked in Fior Di Latte perfume and he’s transported back to that summer in Italy when Francesca didn’t know he was such a loser and life seemed good.
In an attempt to make the apartment more livable, Francesca washes some of his clothes, including those covered in Fior Di Latte perfume. This sets Mark off on an odyssey to regain the scent, his life, his love and his ability to create… He must get drunk on nostalgia to survive and his need for the scent consumes his life to the point where he pays two Italian men to smoke in his car and has an aspiring actress played by Julia Fox, reenact moments with Francesca from his trip to Italy.
Mark is a sad character, I would use the word pathetic if I didn’t pity him so much… His character is both incredibly superlative and also so real, like every awful fella you know that thinks he’s Woody Allen and hangs around screenings desperate for funding. Heidecker plays this type of character well; he always knocks it out of the park when he has to be some type of asshole, but here he plays it with such a sadness and a sort of nuance. His facial expressions here carry his performance; he expresses so much with a twitch of the mouth and a pump of the eyebrows, it’s a tour de force of pulling faces! Ercoli’s writing is so brilliant for him, we wonder if she had Heidecker in mind while writing it.
Heidecker’s constantly gurning performance of the frustrating Mark, plays off Marta Pozzan’s earnest performance of the long-suffering Francesca incredibly well. She brings a genuine concern for his well being that grounds the film in reality, and manages to play the straight (wo)man in a film that can be, in simple terms, extremely ridiculous; with musical numbers, Willy Wonka like contraptions and a plot that blends into the dream like. The film looks brilliant too, shot on film by Thimios Bakatakis of early Lanthimos flick fame.
Heidecker, trying to recreate his Italian trip with Julia Fox and two Italian guys.
You can tell this film is a compacting of Ercoli’s interests. It slaps of old movies, cartoons, Woody Allen, vaudeville comedy and seems formed by lived experiences as a struggling artist. Beyond that, the film joins the tradition of great New York films that make you want to go to New York- even though lots of people in this movie seem off putting and evil !
Mark isn’t just a frustrating and a sad character, he is the dark side of every writer/artist/filmmaker, he is the Hyde to our Dr Jekyll, he could be any of us, and he is in all of us. The writers block, trying to live on your past accolades, sacrificing relationships and facing failure. Scary! But real !
This is such a brilliant expansive debut with such an impressively formed voice and style, and we’re gonna say it… We loved this film. It has everything: musical numbers, Italians, Julia Fox, big laughs, Kevin Kline, Shirley Temple memorabilia, New York City, huffing underpants, delis and lots more. If you can see it, then go see it. It would be a crime to skip it. Comedy is back and we absolutely can’t wait to see what Ercoli does next!
