THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 21, 1996 TAG: 9606210091
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: 46 lines
A DARK SENSE of the absurd is at the heart of Pedro Almodovar's extremely witty and sassy ``The Flower of My Secret.''
This new film from the director of such hits as ``Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown'' and ``Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!'' contains such melodramatic twists as a suicide attempt, lost love and yet another woman on the verge of a breakdown. At the same time, it manages to be outright hilarious.
The heroine, Leo (played with great intensity by Marisa Paredes, who was in the director's ``High Heels'') has a basic problem - the man she loves (her husband) no longer loves her. She won't accept this, even when he joins the peacekeeping army in Bosnia rather than stay with her.
She is the author of a series of highly popular romantic novels, but she can no longer write the puff because her own life has turned unromantic and dark. She always hated the love stories she wrote anyway, using a pseudonym to hide her identity. In a mood of defiance, she writes a scathing review of her own books for a literary newspaper.
The flamboyant Almodovar, who photographed this film in his usual bright, garish colors, often uses mirrors to expand and distort his reality. It is easy to see why Almodovar has called Tennessee Williams his ``spiritual guide.'' He has the same dry sense of the tragic absurd as Williams.
Keeping a straight face and an eye on reality at all times, his film nonetheless comments on a world that is patently out of whack. There is a screaming contest in the streets. Leo's best friend announces, almost casually, that she was the lover of the heroine's missing husband. The maid doubles as a flamenco dancer, with a flair for Martha Graham grandness.
With Hollywood practically bereft of good scripts for mature women, this is a woman's movie in the old-time vein of ``Mildred Pierce'' but with a 1990s complexity that suggests perhaps all of us, male or female, are going crazy.
The suggested solution is that we have a sense of humor about it. ILLUSTRATION: MOVIE REVIEW
``The Flower of My Secret''
Cast: Marisa Paredes, Juan Echanove, Rossy De Palma
Director and Writer: Pedro Almodovar
MPAA rating: R (sexual situations, language)
Mal's rating: ***
Location: Naro in Norfolk by CNB