If Pedro Almodovar’s career has a nexus, it’s The Flower of My Secret, a movie that takes Almodovar’s previous obsessions and forms them into the basis of Almodovar’s next wave of movies. The Flower of My Secret at once looks back to the doomed romances of Law of Desire and Matador, and forward to plot elements that formed All About My Mother and Volver. Though far less lurid than his usual fare, The Flower of My Secret‘s soapy melodrama doesn’t neglect the raw humanity of real life. Here, he’s really leaning into the reality of the situations instead of spinning them for lurid jollies.
Leocaida “Leo” Macias (Marisa Paredes) writes best-selling romance novels that follow a strict formula of happy endings, longing and sexuality. Sadly, her reality hasn’t reflected her fiction for a long time. Her husband Paco (Imanol Arias, Spy Time) is a military officer who spends years stationed in foreign countries like Brussels or Bosnia, only returning to visit for a couple days a year. Longing for her husband has taken its toll on her and her writing, leading her to write a noir novel about a woman who murders her husband and hides him in the freezer of the restaurant next door. This doesn’t please her publishers, and somebody steals her manuscript.
We first meet Leo putting on a pair of boots that are far too tight for her to take off on her own. When Paco first bought them, she required Paco’s help to take them off. Now, she requires the assistance of her best friend Betty, an educator who specializes in training doctors and nurses in convincing family members of dying young patients to donate their organs. Her main scenario is convincing the parents of a young man who has died in a motorcycle accident.
On top of all this, Leo has to deal with her bickering mother and sister. Her mom wants to leave Madrid to live out her remaining days in her small hometown village of Almagro. Besides that, there’s her dancer maid and son, her new newspaper editor Angel, and her publisher’s drug addicted son. It’s a web of intricate melodrama that recalls the best enjoyment of the “woman’s picture” Almodovar specializes in.
Almodovar may not be at the top of his storytelling game – the pacing is a bit laggy in the middle, and his visuals are still not as masterful as in his later works – but this Rosetta Stone of stories creates insight into the worlds of Almodovar. Leo’s mom and her stolen screenplay for the two spiralling plots of Volver. Betty’s organ donor scenario forms the basis of All About My Mother. Leo’s maid and son forming a dance duo resemble elements in Talk To Her. This is Almodovar’s Schizopolis, providing thematic and visual cues leading to his later tapestries. On its own, The Flower of My Secret doesn’t hold up to Almodovar’s finest works, but even the worst Almodovar stands up among the best.
