The Flower of My Secret
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Movie Reviews of The Flower of My Secret
Movie Review: Underrated
Summary: 5 Stars
Almodovar's work seems to follow a progression. It seems to me that The Flower Of My Secret actually marked the beginning of a new stage. As opposed to his previous movies, this one leaves off most of the comedy effects to focus on the intricacies of a writer's life, Leo (short for Leocadia), who struggles to find her way in a life that everybody insists to keep her sheltered from: Her husband doesn't love her, her best friend keeps a shocking secret from her, and even her maid and the maid's son keep a double life behind her back... All this under the excuse or assumption that she is too fragile to deal with it, though that is also a way of covering their own selfishness. When the truth finally surfaces, she is forced to create a new life out of the old one with the help of her sort of crazy family and her new boss.
One of the curiosities of this movie is how it contains the seeds for two other movies Almodovar will make later:
- The scene on the transplant seminar (played by Kitty Manver as a coach nurse in this movie) will be reprised at the beginning of All About My Mother (with Cecilia Roth in the same role).
- The story that Leo delivers to her horrified Romantic Novel editors, about a mother who hides the corpse of her husband in a freezer after he rapes his stepdaughter and is killed in self defense, seems to be the original idea for Volver, that Almodovar will film years later.
Though certainly it might be said this movie is not the best Almodovar ever filmed, especially when he is always trying to top himself, it is well above average, with a complex character development, and well plotted. Definitely, an underrated movie.
Movie Review: Pain and life . . .
Summary: 5 Stars
The wonderful achievement of Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar is his ability to take the material of melodrama and soap opera and with the lightest touch turn it into life affirming entertainment. This 1996 film set in Madrid has another of his women on the verge of a nervous breakdown - several, in fact - and follows her through a series of life crises to a happily bittersweet ending. Marisa Paredes plays the woman, a hugely successful romance writer, who has a tempestuous marriage to an army officer that's headed for divorce, a mother and sister who never stop berating each other, and a best friend who as a grief counselor could give them all lessons on how to give and take bad news but has some bad news of her own she's not revealing.
Add a faithful housekeeper and her son, trying to persuade her to return to a career as a heart-stopping flamenco dancer, plus a soft-hearted newspaper editor ready to come to the rescue, and you have most of the elements of a closely interwoven story that doesn't stop moving until the last breakable object has been thrown and the last tear dabbed away with a tissue. The music track ranges from tango motifs to Miles Davis; there are references right and left to other movies and literature; and the sets and costumes are all bright colors with an emphasis on red. No Almodóvar fan will be disappointed. The DVD includes a short making-of featurette, with interviews of the director and cast.
Movie Review: captivating!
Summary: 5 Stars
Senor Pedro successfully did it again in this wonderful film of lost love and its ultimate rebound,
treated with the director's savvy and wit and humor. I was hugely surprised that Almodovar could also make a superb non-gay themed movie
such as this one. Recommended, definitely!
Movie Review: I've Got A Secret
Summary: 4 Stars
THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET is one of those titles that can strike you at first as being evocative, and then, upon further reflection you might say, "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Well, maybe it loses something in the translation, and maybe it's a cultural or literary reference that is just lost on me. But I suspect I'm not alone. Looking over the reviews posted below, I'd guess that "What the hell is it supposed to mean?" sentiment may be many viewers' response to the entire movie.
Despite my qualms about the title, I wound up liking it myself. But the friend at whose home I watched the film, pretty much just shrugged. We both like Almodovar, so we were starting out from the same place, you could say. And this film is trademark Almodovar in many ways. In fact--in contrast to many of the reviews posted--we both felt that FLOWER had many many over the top moments as his other films. But they were, how you say?, discreetly over the top.
The film has been described as being an homage to classic women's films of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and its star Marisa Paredes does have a kind of Joan Crawford thing going on. She's got a certain steeliness that one could easily take for a kind of classiness--if she didn't do such ludicrous things as wear too-tight boots (which she winds up asking friends and even total strangers to take off for her)simply because her absent husband gave them to her.
Come to find out, hubby is in NATO and has been alternately been spending time in Brussels and Bosnia (this is at the height of the conflict there). But it comes as no surprise that he is not just a good soldier: he has actively sought out assignments that would remove him from his troubled marriage. Nor is it such a surprise that he is really having an affair with his wife's best friend (and boot remover of last resort).
Almodovar's strategy, however, seems to be to mix up the predictable and the surprising. Paredes' character, Leo(cadia) Macias, is a classic jumble of contradictions: willful yet dependent, strong yet vulnerable--traits not at all unusual for "women's movie" heroines. In fact that kind of black and white "tough but tender" contrast has always been a "woman's flick" commonplace. Almodovar adds a few subtle twists. Leo goes through a period of despair after her marriage crumbles. There is even a failed suicide attempt. But even before things came to a head on that front, she had taken a few tentative steps towards a new life. She takes on a new job. She meets a new man who is obviously simpatico and will (just as obviously) be there for her when she needs him. Things are falling into place on one front even before they fall apart on the other.
I have yet to see all of Almodovar's films, but I do admire his ability to create his own universe in each of those I have seen. FLOWER OF MY SECRET--despite its ambiguous title, or maybe even because of it--has its own internal logic. It's a world that's just a little more absurd, a little more dramatic and a little more cinematic than our day-to-day reality, but it all makes sense on its own terms. I like to think that's what movies should do.
Movie Review: Abandonment and recovery
Summary: 4 Stars
"Flower of My Secret" is a more reflective, less manic film than viewers of Almodovar have come to expect, and I for one am glad. One of his favorite themes, the fluid elusiveness or complexity of personal identity, comes through here loud and clear. There's a lot going on in the film--way too much, as a matter of fact--but Almodovar followers have come to expect this, too. But this film is easier to navigate than many of his movies (such as the dreadful "Kiko"), and it has its genuinely sweet moments.
The film focuses on Leo (wonderfully played by Marisa Paredes), a romance novel queen whose life is falling apart. She's too dependent on Paco (Imanol Arias), a husband who's lost interest in her and too fixated on her own grief. She's not an utterly self-centered woman; she takes good financial care of her sister (played by the ever-good Rossy de Palma) and mother. But she's too clingy, and her inability to hang onto Paco is leading her to despair, drink, and a botched suicide attempt.
Enter Angel (Juan Echanove), editor of a newspaper who falls in love with her and in the utterly selfless way that we expect of angels helps her to recover from her sense of abandonment and recognize that life must be taken as it comes.
This exploration of romantic abandonment would've been quite enough for one film. But Almodovar's fertile imagination just can't hold back from cramming lots more into the movie. So there's the theme of authorial integrity and identity that serves as a subplot (Leo insists on writing her romance novels under a pen name, but has come to despise them--the fluidity of identity theme), a bit but not totally distracting (and it serves as the occasion for Leo meeting Angel). Much more distracting, however, and totally unnecessary is a subplot--again, typically Almodovar--of a flamenco performance.
Watch the film for Paredo's performance--and the flamenco is beautiful. But keep in mind that it's got all the messiness that one usually finds in Almodovar.