Review of The Flower of My Secret

We've been working our way through the Almodovar complete oeuvre for a few months, and this was the first one that everyone liked - a proper story without too many slapstick gags or obvious contrived taboo-breaking.

Still lots of very Spanish detail - the return to the village, the interiors heavy with knick-knacks, but no drug-crazed nuns or sex-hungry priests.

Odd relationships to other works; arguably the central scene, in which the heroine's husband comes home on leave from the army, is borrowed directly from a Dorothy Parker short story. The initial scene, in which she acts the part of a mother whose son is brain dead and whose organs are needed for transplants, is borrowed as the basis of another work of fiction, transplanted to California. And the story that's stolen and becomes the plot of a film after the heroine has discarded it, is the plot of another Almodovar film, Volver.

Watched at The Old Co-op in Horns Road as part of Jane's Almodovar season.