The working title for La Flor de mi secreto, the latest film from one of European cinema's most popular directors, Pedro Almodovar, was Is there any chance, however small, of saving what we once had? Almodóvar´s last movie was 'lynched' by the Spanish press, in his own words. His popularity had made him the target of industry envy, and the critical honeymoon was over. Despite a wonderful performance from Veronica Forqué and a typically barbed script, 1993's Kika did look and feel tired an disoriented - and was just too full of murders.
La flor - the eleventh El Deseo picture, the fourth to be coproduced with CIBY 2000 - is the story of Leo (Marisa Paredes, who played singer Becky Páramo in 1991's High Heels. She is the latest in a long line of Almodóvar women on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
A forty-something writer of romantic fiction, Leo is bitter because her life is so unlike her fiction. She has a soldier husband, Paco (Imanol Arias), a friend Betty (Carmen Elias), whose job is teaching doctors how to break the bad news to bereaved relatives, and a bickering mother (Chus Lampreave) and sister (Rossy de Palma) who live together in Parla, outside Madrid.
Between them, they create a deeply pleasurable sentimental intrigue about the importance of being hopeful in which, for perhaps the first time, all the emotions feel earned. This is Almodóvar´s most coherent script yet, and the melodrama is all in the movie's style rather than in plot or character.
All the staple fetishes are in there - the sleeping pills, the housemaid, the television set, the amused glances at the remnants of la España negra, the emotive bolero, this time by the great Chavela Vargas - and crucially, a beautifully-shot Madrid itself. The dialogue is less frenziedly gag-hunting than it once was, though, witty rather than hilarious - ´reality,' Leo says, 'should be banned.' There are no baddies in sight, and there is even a celebration of the restorative powers of country life.
Ten years ago, he was the perfect movie spokesman for a generation revelling in a new democracy. And though Almodóvar himself is no longer the enfant terrible of Spanish cinema, his production company El Deseo is doing its bit for the industry's new faces. Having produced Acción Mutante, Alex de la Iglesia´s first film, it has just released his second - El Día de la bestia - to a rave reception at the Venice Festival. Monica Laguna's debut Tengo Una Casa is about to go into post-production, and October sees shooting begin on Daniel Carapasolo's second feature, Pasajes.
Almodóvar is at work on various scripts, amongst which are an adaptation of British thriller writer Ruth Rendell's Live Flesh and - curiouser and curiouser - a Western. So far, much of his charm and interest for a non-Spanish public has been the very Spanishness of his work, and it will be interesting to see how he copes with a move into less familiar terrain.
So is there any chance, however small, of saving the reputation he had? The intelligence and (let's say it) maturity of La Flor should not only save it, but considerably enhance it. It is certainly Almodóvar's most subtle and beautiful film, and it may also be his best.
JOHN HOPEWELL
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