Red-Barracuda A novelist who writes highly popular, yet vapid and generic romantic fiction under a pseudonym, finds herself dissatisfied with her work. With her marriage falling apart, she turns away from romance and pens a bleak realist novel, one which her publishers have no interest in. To complicate matters further, she finds herself hired as a newspaper literary critic who is unknowingly tasked by her editor with reviewing her own work.The Flower of My Secret was a film in a new direction from Spanish director Pedro Almódovar. He had hitherto been associated with colourful comedies such as the excellent and stylish Kika (1993), but with this film he definitely moved into a more mature and toned down direction. He had made films about women on the edge before of course but this time he was treating the material in a more measured and serious manner. It was an approach that reminded me a little of Woody Allen's move into more drama-based material after years of full-on comedy, in fact this film shares some similar ideas to Allen's Stardust Memories (1980), with its story about a writer who wants to make serious art but is held back by their audience's desire for more of the light-hearted stuff that made them popular in the first place. It could be argued that Almódovar, like Allen, was speaking for himself through his central character in this movie. Whatever the case, this could best be described as a melodrama with the camp elements marginalised. There is still some more typical comedy, however, with all of the scenes involving the writer's mother and sister providing plenty of humour. Marisa Paredes, who is a reliable staple of the Spanish movie scene, is excellent in this lead role. It's a character with a fair bit of depth and one who goes through considerable emotion, and Paredes is very good as the central dramatic core of the movie. The film overall is a strong bit of work from Almódovar and is an early indicator of future serious dramas which he would direct which would to go on to be among the most popular in his career. As it is, this is another fine, less well-known film from the Spanish auteur.

gavin6942 Leo Macias writes sentimental novels with great success but hidden under a pseudonym, Amanda Gris. She is unhappy with her professional life and with her husband, a soldier working in Brussels and Bosnia that is never at home. She will try anything to change her life.I thought from the description that this was going to be about a man writing as a woman so he could write romance novels. I thought that was quite clever, considering the number of women who had used male pseudonyms to get published over the years... but it turns out that Leo is a woman, so this crushed by hopes.What turns out to be the most interesting thing is how this film foreshadows other, better Almodovar 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 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 "All About My Mother".

tedg I'd travel half a day to see one of his films properly projected. Even though some of his fantasies are hard to connect to, he would never fail to deliver on the cinematic front. Most viewers think the story here too melodramatic and simple. It does not seem so to me. It has multiple, contradictory nestings. It has metacharacters that temporarily settle on one character or another. It has deeply accessible feminine emotions (at least by film standards), and they are allowed to go down narrative blind alleys like life has it. It has inner film, here in the form of romance novels (and war).We never really know when we are swimming in life or an image of life created in one of the fictions of the characters.But the value is never in the story, it is in how the emotional space is conveyed visually. It is hard to carry a fresh impression of an Almodovar film over the years; those impressions saturate the soul as intended. So I cannot say with authority that this is at least as amazing as his best ("Talk"). It sure seems so; there are several shots that made me watch this three times in a row.Some are a bit too literal for my taste, like the scene that accompanies her madness (med students protesting about sex in the street), or her breakup (bouncing marbles). But I expect these from Pedro. Here is an example of the better kind, an amazing shot at about 55 minutes in. Our authoress leads a double, double life. In her first full dip, she encounters her second publisher (and later ghost) who himself has a pseudonym. The shot is through a staggered glass wall. She is out of sight but there are four reflections of her, two of which are superimposed on him and his reflection. (He invites her to a screaming contest.) It is astonishing. You should know that I see four distinct layers of her being in the narrative here; it is a standard for the women in his later films.Another shot: she has been rescued by her ghostwriter and wakes up in a strange place we don't initially know. It is his bed we later discover. Our establishing shot is through a window over the bed to a several story high billboard of her latest book on a famous store's front. This is a book that she does not yet know exists. Only later do we see that the location is through a window, over a bed in his apartment with him nearby watching her in precisely the way we saw the billboard. But the remarkable thing is not that progression as well done a reveal as it is, but how it starts, with a confusing black and white blur. Only later do we discover what it was: the zebra curtains framing the window. His vision and words do this throughout his films, moving from frame to background to immersion in a reality that merges the foreground and background situations.The next major scene is a performance. We see her maid, unexpectedly as an accomplished dancer, in a seductive dance with her hunky son! It is deep and full of captured motion, though I think it would take a real Spaniard to get the full impression.We soon learn that he stole her last manuscript, one she did not like, and a film is being made of it. We know also, as loyal Pedro viewers, that the film is one of the layers of his work, a few layers of which we have just seen.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

KGB-Greece-Patras Having seen most of Almodovar films, I have to say I prefer his more hilarious, comical, absurd ones. High heels, Talk to her are two other examples of Almodovar doing almost straightforward "drama" - though not the usual drama fare.That said, this touched me a lot. Without excluding some typically unusual -hillariously funny- Almodovar dialogues and "usual suspects", this film is about pasiion, lust, bitterness, disappointment, joy. It is, after all, about life. Acting of the lead actress is top notch, it's human as far as it goes. No silly plot tricks, no deus ex machina, this is not another sorry a$$ American drama with easy solutions or a bright happy end.Almodovar is one of the greatest artists of film!