Thanks for the memories!

An Exercise In Nonsense

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

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".

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!

In a hospital doctors announces to a woman her son is dead... She goes through a phase of denial and refuses to donate his organs for transplant. After awhile, the spectator understand all that was a training simulation. In how many of Almodovar films was this sequence repeated?Name at least two.

The film famed for pivoting Almodovar's move away from formless farce to the rich delights of melodrama, which would produce his two masterpieces, LIVE FLESH and ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER. SECRET isn't quite up to those films (the mix of comedy and drama isn't quite digested) but is a wonderful start, with its amazing heroine, whose delusions and needs are revealed but never resolved; its typically eccentric supporting cast; its ruminations on the artist and her art - there are writers, editors, dancers, filmmakers all in the film - and secrets, both private and public; its silly men; its use of interiors and decor; Almodovar's still cherishable, unparalleled use of colour, allied with a new found sense of composition (the later films would reveal his increasing mastery of the camera); some extraordinary shots, especially the paper shower during the students' demonstration.