Customer Reviews

La Flor de mi secreto [VHS]

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A quiet restrained Almodovar movie, rich with symbols and style (artistic shots made through different patterns - mirrors, straw chair patterns, etc.). This movie is also a tribute to the Spanish culture - dance, food and various elements of the folklore which appear in lace making, landscape and portrayal of "country people".
This is the story of Leo (Marisa Paredes) who is a writer. Leo writes her stories under a pseudonym as she is not proud of the sugary love stories she writes. This "real/unreal love" is one of the main themes and conflicts of the movie. Leo, under again another pseudonym attacks her own love stories while Angel, her new boss and friend writes in favor of the sugary author. Should we believe the dramatic love story which always comes with a happy ending but is somewhat untrue or should we write / or dream about everyday truthful life where love, like other achievements comes after hard work?
In the opening scene Leo has trouble getting her boots off - the boots are a present from her husband and she wears them although they are so tight she cannot breath. In what is later understood as a very symbolic act she tries to take the boots off in various ways but succeeds only after her friend Betty manages to help her. Betty works in the transplant section of the hospital (transplants and the detailed process of explaining the death of a dear one to his relatives also appear in Almodovar "all about my mother" and Almodovar is definitely doing a great service to this matter). Leo drinks a lot. She is very miserable and misses her husband who is in the army. Leo knows they are having problems but it seems that the viewer is in a better position to understand the nature of their relationship. Leo is both aware of problems yet blind to several facts that are presented to her face (blindness is another motive - as Leo's mother who was brought from the country to live with Leo's sister in the city is half blind, yet there are several things she can "see" very well). When Leo finally understands the truth - she falls apart and is aided back to life by her family and new friend.
This is first of all a love story, but more then that this is a story of loyalty vs. infidelity (on the one hand we have Blanka, Leo's faithful maid and on the other side her close friend), city vs. country, and once and again the question of truth - in relationships, in writing, and maybe in art in general (through the story of Blanka and her son dance group).
Marisa Parades is convincing and is aided by a lovely group of actors of which I would like to mention Leo's sister, Rossy de Palma whose face is so memorable you cannot forget. This actress has also participated in Almodovar movie "Kika" and makes a strong impression.

Some viewers have placed this exciting film 'La Flor de mi secreto' into the 'not up to standard' Pedro Almodóvar films, a classification this viewer finds difficult to understand. Filmed in the luxuriously colorful palette (especially the repeated use of the color red in every scene) that has become his trademark, set with a musical score that includes Spanish song and guitar and flamenco, and introducing a wildly disparate group of over-the-top women played by a bevy of fine actresses - it all seems echt Almodóvar to me. No, there is not the outrageous side of gender bending that suffuses many of his more popular films, but there is a fine story that resonates throughout this remarkable movie that makes it very much worth the attention of lovers of Spanish cinema.

The film opens during the credits on a woman being informed that her 16-year old son is brain dead as a result of a motorcycle accident and two young doctors (including the irrepressible young Jordi Molla) are trying to convince her to allow the respirator to be disconnected and the boy's organs harvested for donor transplant. Sad, tense though this opening is we discover soon enough that the trio are actors making a demo film for medical personnel to learn to deal with such possible family encounters! Point: what appears to be a tragedy becomes a 'farcical depiction' guided by a seminar leader Betty (Carmen Elías). Flash into a different scene and we me Leo (the immensely talented Almodóvar favorite Marisa Paredes), depressed to the extreme over the failure of her marriage to her beloved Paco (Imanol Arias), a NATO 'soldier' who took assignments as far from Leo as possible. Now Leo continues to write her trashy novels she has never had published while clinging to the Paco (she wears his clothes, currently his boots) she cannot recover. Noting that the boots are too tight she leaves her typewriter to flee into the streets to find someone to remove the painful boots and after frustrating encounters with less than helpful people, she turns to her best friend Betty (yes, at a seminar!) who successfully removes the shoes. It seems Paco had an affair with Betty, a fact that further flails at Leo's pain. Betty assuages her by introducing her to a literary editor Ángel (Juan Echanove) who asks Leo to come on staff as a critic - most particularly to review the 'example manuscript' Leo has presented him in applying for the job. The reaction is predictable and Leo is at odds with how to continue her life.

Along the way of the story Leo gets advice from her hilarious mother and sister (Chus Lampreave and Rossy De Palma in typical Almodóvar creations!) and from her maid Blanca (Manuela Vargas) and Blanca's son Antonio (Joaquín Cortés) who perform Spanish ballet as a side line (and incredibly well, too - with some wonderful flamencoesque moments of artistic relief). Coincidences happen that allow Leo to ultimately catch a new perspective on her life without Paco - in a most unexpected way.

So what is not to love about this Almodóvar opus? For this viewer, absolutely nothing. It is a delight from beginning to end and deserves reconsideration in placement in the gifted director's echelon of works. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, September 06

. . . and maybe those aren't words fans normally associate with Almodovar, at least when not linked to words like "junky," "transvestite," or "porn star." I disagree with the reviewer who termed this a misfire--it's simply a more thoughtful film by this usually over-the-top director. Visually, one of his most arresting films, Almodovar chooses to focus this time on the distance between true love and idealized love as seen in romance novels and how they sometimes intersect in surprising ways. Marissa Paredes shows stunning range as the main character--at times both critically stung and deeply needy and yet passionate and cocky . . . boy, do you root for her. And the scene in which she is literally pushed by a mob of protesters into the arms of the man she could be truly happy with is one of the best in movies. NOT a disappointment at all.

This film is my second favorite Almodovar film, falling between Law of Desire and Dark Habits. It tells the story of a romance writer who's own real-life romance is falling apart. She is torn between the image of herself as tragic victim and as perpetuator of rosy love stories. This is a very subtle film by Almodovar, but I've seen it four times now and it yields more beauty with each viewing. Central to my enjoyment of the film is Marisa Paredes. She is a grand actress in the old Hollywood tradition (check her out in Almodovar's fine new film, All About My Mother). She runs the gamut of every possible emotion and creates a character that is memorable and moving. Her performance rivals those of Julietta Serrano in Dark Habits and Carmen Maura in Law of Desire. Almodovar favorites Rossy de Palma and Chuz Lamprave make memorable cameos in this movie. This is a must see film!

I agree with what the second reviewer says about this sensitive, passionate, lyrical portrayal of a courageous, strong, disciplined woman whose nemesis, as always, results from the heart. The betrayals she suffers are as profound as her love is and Marisa Paredes comes through as one of the half a dozen or so most important film actresses of the decade. One particular scene, the mother returning to her native village, provides one of the most exquisite moments in film: the background text and the sight and the voice becoming a separate moment of intense recollection and joy. Nothing misfired about this genuine masterpiece. ''Mamadoc'' s.marie

This film is perhaps especially telling to people in their 40's and 50's, because character's search for love and comfort can only be fully appreciated by people of this age, who are more or less in the same situation as this woman-novelist with numerous emotional problems and no solution to them.

She does find a solution eventually, but you have to wait until the end of the film to see that. It will not dissapoint you at all; in fact, it might surprise you a great deal...

Wonderful supporting characters (e.g. novelist's mother and sister) make this film an outstanding thinking piece about human life. Very deep!

In Almodovar's words this represents his first mature work (and maybe it is from a certain point of view) i do personally think that there were others before(Law of Desire, Matador) but it is fact that The Flower of My Secret settled all the basis for movies like All About My Mother, Talk To Her, Volver, etc..........Two women sharing one love, a man looking for love, passion, deception....pure Almodovar!!!The Flower of My Secret

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.

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.

Not as emotionally intense as Live Flesh; not as stinging and punchy as What Have I Done to Deserve This?; not as all-out wacky as Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down!, this is nevertheless an enjoyable piece of cinema that, more than anything else, wears its heart on its sleeve--proving that, at least somewhere inside him, director Pedro Almodovar is a real softie.

Combining flamenco (not seen in any other of his films), paella, romance novel ghostwriting, a crumbling marriage, a sentimental editor, a lovestarved writer, and a few other choice characters, Almodovar offers this movie treat as he would a sugary confection to his eager audience, just knowing they'll eat it up. And we do.

Leo--a woman writer--secretly writes romance novels to make a big chunk of money, but is more complex than that, savoring a long list of "suicidal woman writers"--Djuna Barnes, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Parker, and many others. Married to a career soldier, Paco, who's too busy helping Bosnians to pay attention to Leo, she turns to her friends for help, and to the bottle, and, eventually, to a newspaper editor, Angel (a man) who takes her on after being smitten with her.

That's the story in a nutshell, but the film has the Almodovar stamp all over it. We have the feisty mother (very similar to the one in What Have I Done to Deserve This?--in fact, played by the same actress), the young stud guy, the semi-neurotic female friends/peers of the female protagonist, the misunderstood male lead(s), etc. But that's fine; the director makes the dialogue his own (he should; he wrote it, also!) and we know it's his and are all the better for it.

While not the best Almodovar, this is still very entertaining and substantially better than many other films out there.