Themes: Writer's Life, Midlife Crises, Double Life
Main Cast: Marisa Paredes, Juan Echanove, Imanol Arias, Carmen Elias, Rossy de Palma
Release Year: 1995
Country: FR/ES
Run Time: 105 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
From Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar (Live Flesh, All About My Mother) comes this offbeat drama about Leo Macías (Marisa Paredes), a romance novelist who writes her trashy tomes under the pseudonym Amanda Gris. When her marriage begins to dissolve, Leo finds herself falling into despair, leading her to drink and lose her knack for writing her tawdry tales. Out of her turmoil, she writes a bleak novel that garners no attention. To make matters worse, Ángel (Juan Echanove), a newspaper editor with a romantic interest in Leo, hires her to write a scathing review of Amanda Gris, not realizing Gris is Leo's nom de plume. Nominated for several Goya awards, La Flor de Mi Secreto also stars Carmen Elías and Rossy de Palma. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
Review
In one of his more mainstream films, popular Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar shifts to standard melodrama in The Flower of My Secret. The story and style is toned down from the usual Almodóvar trademarks of high camp and wild, colorful, and kinky characters. Leo, capably played by Marisa Parades, is treated tenderly, and the struggles with her marriage and career are shown with sentiment, rather than bent toward comedy. Compared to his previous outrageously styled works, this departure suffers as a paler version of his zany comedies. However, it also marks a point of maturity for his characters. It can be debated whether Almodóvar is referring to his own career in the character of Leo, a pulp romance novelist who hates her popular work and wants to write something serious. The character Leo makes references to Hollywood director George Cukor, and it appears Almodóvar is striving for that director's elegance, especially in their shared respect for film heroines. Almodóvar would continue to explore the psychological drama genre in his highly successful All About My Mother. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Chus Lampreave - Mother; Abraham Garcia; Kiti Manver; Juan Jose Otegui; Jordi Mollà; Manuela Vargas - Blanca; Alicia Agut; Joaquín Cortés - Antonio
Credit
Wolfgang Burmann - Art Director, Hugo Mezcua - Costume Designer, Pedro Lazaga, Jr. - First Assistant Director, Pedro Almodóvar - Director, José Salcedo - Editor, Agustín Almodóvar - Executive Producer, Alberto Iglesias - Composer (Music Score), Michael Levine - Camera Operator, Esther Garcia - Production Designer, Affonso Beato - Cinematographer, Esther Garcia - Producer, Miguel Lopez Pelegrin - Set Designer, Bernardo Menz - Sound/Sound Designer, Pedro Almodóvar - Screenwriter
Marisa Paredes is Leocadia ("Leo") Macias, a woman writing “pink” romance novels under the alias of Amanda Gris that are very popular all across Spain. Unlike her romantic novels, her own love life is troubled. Leo has a less than happy relationship with her husband Paco, a military officer stationed in Brussels then later in Bosnia, who is distant both physically and emotionally.
Leo begins to change the direction of her writing, wanting to focus more on darker themes such as pain and loss, and can no longer write her Amanda Gris novels, whose publishers demand sentimental happy-endings, at least until her contract is up.
She begins to reevaluate her life through her relationship with her husband, her supposedly best friend Betty, her "crab-faced" sister Rosa and her bickering elderly mother. She also meets Angel, a newspaper editor who quickly falls for Leo and her writing.
References forward to other Almodóvar films
In The Flower of my Secret, the plot of Leo's new, gritty, novel is stolen and used as the basis of a film screenplay The Freezer. In a coup of life imitating art, a decade later it formed the basis of Almodóvar's own 2006 film Volver.
Another sub-plot scene from The Flower of my Secret, the student doctors being taught how to persuade a grieving mother to allow her son's organs to be used in transplant, was used as the starting point of Almodóvar's 1999 film All About My Mother.
