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".
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".