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Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I'd travel half a day to see one of his films properly projected. Even though some of his fantasies are hard to connect to, he would never fail to deliver on the cinematic front. Most viewers think the story here too melodramatic and simple. It does not seem so to me. It has multiple, contradictory nestings. It has metacharacters that temporarily settle on one character or another. It has deeply accessible feminine emotions (at least by film standards), and they are allowed to go down narrative blind alleys like life has it. It has inner film, here in the form of romance novels (and war).We never really know when we are swimming in life or an image of life created in one of the fictions of the characters.But the value is never in the story, it is in how the emotional space is conveyed visually. It is hard to carry a fresh impression of an Almodovar film over the years; those impressions saturate the soul as intended. So I cannot say with authority that this is at least as amazing as his best ("Talk"). It sure seems so; there are several shots that made me watch this three times in a row.Some are a bit too literal for my taste, like the scene that accompanies her madness (med students protesting about sex in the street), or her breakup (bouncing marbles). But I expect these from Pedro. Here is an example of the better kind, an amazing shot at about 55 minutes in. Our authoress leads a double, double life. In her first full dip, she encounters her second publisher (and later ghost) who himself has a pseudonym. The shot is through a staggered glass wall. She is out of sight but there are four reflections of her, two of which are superimposed on him and his reflection. (He invites her to a screaming contest.) It is astonishing. You should know that I see four distinct layers of her being in the narrative here; it is a standard for the women in his later films.Another shot: she has been rescued by her ghostwriter and wakes up in a strange place we don't initially know. It is his bed we later discover. Our establishing shot is through a window over the bed to a several story high billboard of her latest book on a famous store's front. This is a book that she does not yet know exists. Only later do we see that the location is through a window, over a bed in his apartment with him nearby watching her in precisely the way we saw the billboard. But the remarkable thing is not that progression as well done a reveal as it is, but how it starts, with a confusing black and white blur. Only later do we discover what it was: the zebra curtains framing the window. His vision and words do this throughout his films, moving from frame to background to immersion in a reality that merges the foreground and background situations.The next major scene is a performance. We see her maid, unexpectedly as an accomplished dancer, in a seductive dance with her hunky son! It is deep and full of captured motion, though I think it would take a real Spaniard to get the full impression.We soon learn that he stole her last manuscript, one she did not like, and a film is being made of it. We know also, as loyal Pedro viewers, that the film is one of the layers of his work, a few layers of which we have just seen.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Flor is one of Pedro's understated best. The incomparable Marisa Paredes gives this film its ultimate power. Her extraordinary face details every nuance of the loss of her marriage--"abandonment," as Sr. Almodovar labels it. The rich flamenco scenes reframe the passion and pain Marisa's character moves through during the film. And as nearly always, Sr. A. pays homage here to other works that have informed his vision--a barrage of brilliant and troubled women writers (Djuna Barnes, Dorothy Parker, Carson McCullers, et al.), and "Casablanca" and "Rich and Famous," for instance. I thank God for Pedro. Without him, life would be as the lyrics of the Bola de Nieve song in this film--"no me dejes vivir."

The title of Almodovar's later film, All About My Mother, was a nod of respect in the direction of the 1950 Hollywood film, All About Eve, which contains Bette Davis's famous line - "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night". This quote could well appear at the start of most of the Spanish director's films, certainly Flower. Here, the rider on his emotional rollercoaster is Leocadia (Leo) Macias (Marisa Paredes), whose marriage and life are in crisis. She is not as young as she was, and her handsome husband Paco (Imanol Arias) has lost interest and is about to leave her. The "secret" of the title is that Leo writes romantic novels under an assumed name, but hers is not the only secret revealed in the movie.Spoiled and self-centred Leo is not the most likeable of women; her sister Rosa (the wonderful Rossy de Palma) who looks after their aged mother probably deserves more of our sympathy. But the nicest people don't necessarily provide the most interesting stories; and Almodovar isn't trying to enlist our pity, but our understanding. If, according to the oft-quoted screenplay dictum, character is defined by action, then what he shows us is a courageous character who overcomes her self-pity, and takes up life and love again. Leo comes to terms with her loss, in much the same way as the mother in film's opening scene finally accepts that her son is dead. But that episode turns out to be a repeatable training session for doctors, so perhaps Almodovar is warning Leo that loss of love can take place more than once, or possibly he is suggesting to the audience that they regard Leo's story as a training session for life. This unashamed melodrama is conveyed via magical acting, great camerawork, and above all intense colours. There are a few specifically Spanish touches, including a sequence where Leo and her mother return to their idyllic, picturesque family village, and a flamenco dance (to Miles Davis music). As usual, there are also reminders of the downsides of modern urban life, though some of the references to drugs and unemployment are a little forced and superfluous. All in all, this is a great pictorial story teller telling perhaps not his greatest tale, but certainly one worth listening to and seeing.

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.