更新时间:2019-02-04
他他 • 我的秘密之花:[Film Review] The Flower of My Secret (1995) 7.2/10
As a successful romantic novelist, Leo Macías (Paredes) lives on an easy street of Madrid, but middle-age crisis starts kicking in, the relationship with her husband Paco (Arias), a military officer who goes out of his way to be stationed in foreign countries (a typical cop-out move of the guilty part), is on the rocks, which significantly cripples her output of cloying love stories, and under contractual obligation and a nom-de-plume clause which gives her the freedom of anonymity, her high-flying career might take a sea change when she seeks to publish her latest anti-romantic works through a newspaper editor Angel (Echanove), who begins to take a shine for her.
THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET, Almodóvar’s 11th feature, might as well echo his own creativity struggle at that mid-point in his life, between churning out familiar stories that promise stability or breaking out from his comfort zone to map out new territory, an artist’s perpetual dilemma, that is.
Leo’s latent desire to shucking off her status quo and persistent loneliness is comically symbolized by a pair of shoes that Paco bought for her years ago that now becomes too tight for her to take it off, and cannot reach her maid Blanca (flamenco dancer Vargas, who will not exeunt without a fiery rendition), she has to cross the city to ask her best friend Betty (Elias) for help. Tellingly, female friendship is never simply a friend-or-foe dichotomy in Almodóvar’s understanding, here it is complicated by secrets, conflicted by feelings but ultimately benevolent, and men, on the other hand, are less so, Paco’s egotistic ultimatum prompts Leo to suicidal actions, Angel’s banal affection looks more like a stopgap than a soul-mate for her, and Blanca’s son Antonio (Cortés), is stripped down to a dunderhead with an improbable sense of naiveté, to whom Leo symbolically grants a gratitude than taking advantage of his corporeal gesture.
Thankfully, the school of hard knocks is graced by Marisa Paredes’ commandingly doleful star turn in the center, to incarnate a woman who is aspiring to burn the bridge and plow on over a dead-end marriage with a renewed direction of life, and the most ebullient parts are those with her mother and sister (Lampreave and de Palma respectively), when motormouth meets loudmouth, both are extraordinarily funny as the bickering duo, plus we must give the mother the credit for doling out her cracker-barrel philosophies and Lampreave is particularly swell in delivering her lines with a delicious cadence.
At any rate, THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET is Almodóvar’s more conventional and sympathetic practice of his slant on female emotional provenance, it might stem from love (even a lopsided one), family (even it is affixed with constant squabbling) or friendship (even if contains betrayal), but most of all, there is a form of vitality as immanent as a woman’s tears, vulnerable it seems, but the operative word here is “ indissoluble”.
referential entries: Almodóvar’s JULIETA (2016, 7.0/10), WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS? (1984, 7.0/10).
我的秘密之花La flor de mi secreto(1995)
又名：爱火花(港) / 窗边上的玫瑰(台) / 我的神秘之花 / 窗边的玫瑰 / 爱·火·花 / The Flower of My Secret
上映日期：1995-09-22(西班牙)片长：103分钟
主演：玛丽莎·佩雷德斯 Marisa Paredes/胡安·查诺华 Juan Echanove/卡勒梅·艾利亚斯 Carme Elias/萝西·德·帕尔马 Rossy de Palma/达兹·莱姆波瑞娃 Chus Lampreave/琪蒂·曼维尔 Kiti Manver/华金·柯特斯 Joaquín Cortés/马纽埃尔·巴尔加斯 Manuela Vargas/伊马诺尔·阿里亚斯 Imanol Arias/格洛里亚·穆诺兹 Gloria Muñoz/胡安·乔斯·奥特圭 Juan José Otegui/南乔·诺沃 Nancho Novo/詹迪·莫拉 Jordi Mollà/艾丽西娅·阿吉特 Alicia Agut/马里索尔·穆里尔 Marisol Muriel
导演：佩德罗·阿莫多瓦 Pedro Almodóvar编剧：佩德罗·阿莫多瓦 Pedro Almodóvar
