“An examination of how shared spaces shape relationships and memories”

“You remember too much, my mother said to me recently. Why hold onto all that? And I said, Where can I put it down? She shifted to a question about airports.” — The Glass Essay, Anne Carson

A quiet, and seemingly insignificant moment in Kamila Serwicka’s Blossoming can be understood as a key to assembling the pieces of this almost diary-like collage of intimate family moments. Returning to the house she left many years earlier during the COVID-19 pandemic, Serwicka uses the forced isolation of the period as an invitation to look inward, examining herself and the mechanisms that keep the household functioning. From inside the house, Kamila observes her family sitting outside at a garden table: the women on one side, her father on the other. In and out, close and distant, the director examines the literal and metaphorical bonds between the women while a masculine presence lingers, casting a shadow over every interaction, even when he is not physically present.

Perhaps because Blossoming is fundamentally an examination of how shared spaces shape relationships and memories, the five years of footage that attempt to construct a multigenerational portrait of a family predominantly formed by women ultimately revolve around a central question: what does it mean to inhabit the same space, and when does that space itself become part of the problem? If Kamila, her mother, and her sisters are constantly remembering their traumas and reliving them, it is because every piece of furniture, every wall, and every room in the house seems to function as a trigger.

This becomes particularly evident through the film’s three-part structure. The first section, by far the most uncomfortable to watch, focuses on Kamila’s father, who constantly intimidates and harasses the women around the house. He demands that they prepare food for him, blames them for his debts and alcoholism, and above all seems to be everywhere. A house spacious enough to shelter all of them comfortably is made unbearably crowded by a man who makes himself larger by making everyone around him smaller. Breakfasts, holidays, parties, every interaction is conditioned by his mood. Even the exterior images, such as the rain falling outside, seem to be shaped by the sound of police sirens responding to yet another call about a disturbance.

Then, a second phase begins. The world is still marked by the pandemic: people wear masks, hand sanitizer is ubiquitous, and public spaces are gradually preparing to reopen. At the same time, Kamila’s mother begins the process of divorcing her husband, and her father is removed from the shared space of the house. Yet as the family attempts to celebrate holidays again and resume their lives, there is, as mentioned earlier, too much memory embedded in every room. In many ways, the house has become haunted. Her father is no longer seen there, but they must continue to talk about him. There are divorce proceedings to navigate, conversations to have, and memories to confront. As Kamila realizes that this haunting is also generational — her grandmother was likewise forced to raise her children alone after leaving an abusive marriage — she begins to understand that their lives have been a constant process of learning how to live with, and without, violent men.

In this sense, silence becomes as loud as the fights that dominated the first part of the film. Her father’s absence does not erase his presence; instead, it creates another kind, one that demands to be acknowledged and dealt with.

Finally, Kamila’s mother, now physically separated from her husband, moves to another country and attempts to establish a new life on her own. Here, another quiet and brilliant moment comes to mind. The women discuss their wishes for the future, and her mother seems unable to even formulate a desire for herself. When asked what she wants, she simply says that she wishes for everyone to be healthy. But what about her? Once again, the house, the physical building itself, seems to be the film’s central character. The mother becomes, at times, merely a voice on the telephone; the sisters begin to live their lives separately. Yet we are not given a fully detailed portrait of who they become away from that place and the memories it contains. That is not the story Blossoming is trying to tell.

This idea is perhaps most powerfully translated in the film’s most poignant moment, when the camera stops recording images and we are left only with the audio of an emotional and difficult conversation with Kamila’s father. Even without being seen, he remains a presence, a ghost who demands that the living make sense of his own narrative and, in doing so, somehow justify his own mistakes. “I had no idea, sweetheart,” he says. But the statement carries a disturbing implication: you should have dealt with it, while also letting me know how difficult it was for you.

Maybe, then, Blossoming is not a diary, nor simply a collage of intimate moments recorded around a childhood home. Perhaps it is a letter to a father: a way of saying, look, this is how it felt to be there; this is what it feels like to be me. In one way or another, perhaps that is the only reason we continue to tell stories: because, as Anne Carson writes in The Glass Essay, we are never quite sure where to put down all the things we carry. So we remain telling them, giving shape to what cannot otherwise be set down, if only to release some of the weight of carrying them.