Synopsis

This is the story of childhood traumas parachuting into present day loves.

Paul, is a charming, solid guy who cares for his attention seeking mother whilst plying his trade as a florist at the small kiosk he inherited from his father on the Albert Cuypt market in De Pijp in Amsterdam. It’s an old  street market in, what has become,  a hipster area of town, with its vegan, Middle Eastern, Suriname, Spanish eateries, retro clothing and second hand book shops.

Having been humiliated at a previous Valentines Day for wanting to go exclusive with a girl he thought wanted to go exclusive when he really didn’t want to be exclusive ( it’s complicated) this Valentines Day finds Paul still sworn off love. It’s a comfortable place to be.

Then he has to deliver flowers to the big house of a lovely, smiling, bi-racial, young and successful publisher called Eva. Paul, recognising the scent of attraction, delivers the flowers and runs!

Eva, on the other hand, egged on by her brash best friend Julia, has decided to fall in love and be exclusive. That’s how she does thing. And that is why she’s is successful… and eco conscious and vegan ….and a control freak. Not necessarily in that order.

After the encounter on the doorstep, Eva asks Paul to come to the office and deliver some organically grown plants, which  also allows her to invite him to a vegan restaurant to discuss… more office plants. Paul accepts… and then decide not to go… and then decide to go but send Albert, his sixty year old employee he also inherited from his father, to sit in for him until he can get there. Which means he is late. And Eva, the control freak, hates lateness. But she is full of kindness when Albert drops to the floor with a mild heart attack just before Paul arrives.

Hospitals can be good a good meeting place, but as Paul mumbles his excuses, he is confronted by Eva’s wall, if not war, against lateness. It’s is a deeply entrenched wall…war nurtured by an absent father, who never learned the lesson of turning up for his daughter.

At first, Paul finds this a  perfect ready-made excuse to stay away from love. However, after a sobering reality check delivered by Melvin, his black best friend working ‘temporarily’ collecting garbage, Paul  eventually arrives at Eva’s place to explain why he was being the guy he actually wasn’t.It’s complicated.

As love blooms it makes them forget that there are six people in this relationship. Eva’s father, the two of them and Paul’s mother. And when it reminds them, that’s when all their internal issues cascade into their external world. In Paul’s case his pleasing way learnt from dealing with a clinging mother and in Eva’s case trying to control a world where everyone is predictable and turns up on time- unlike her father.

As things get  more and more tricky in their love and Paul tries to employ his ‘mother pleasing’ tactics to deal with a ‘father flawed’ Eva, it takes a destructive and burning split for them to find themselves eventually  in a new space not haunted by emotions of the past and where love can truly bloom.

This is the story of overcoming childhood traumas and letting yourself bloom.