# The Flower of My Secret
**The Flower of My Secret** (*La flor de mi secreto*) is a 1995 Spanish-French drama directed and written by [Pedro Almodóvar](https://www.edgepedia.org/pedro-almodovar), starring Marisa Paredes as Leo Macías, a bestselling writer of romance novels whose marriage and creative life collapse at the same time. It was produced by El Deseo S.A. and Ciby 2000, released in Spain on 20 September 1995, and distributed in the United States by [Sony Pictures Classics](https://www.edgepedia.org/sony-pictures-classics).[1](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/es-es/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=2195) • [2](https://www.sonyclassics.com/flower/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director and writer | Pedro Almodóvar, his eleventh feature[3](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2005/cteq/flower_of_my_secret/) |
| Production | El Deseo S.A. (Spain) and Ciby 2000 (France); Spain 80%, France 20%[1](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/es-es/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=2195) |
| Release | Spain, 20 September 1995; United States, 8 March 1996 (Sony Pictures Classics)[1](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/es-es/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=2195) • [2](https://www.sonyclassics.com/flower/) |
| Runtime | 102 minutes (103 min per the ICAA record)[1](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/es-es/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=2195) |
| Spanish box office | 981,846 admissions and €3,197,392.37 gross[1](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/es-es/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=2195) |
| Awards | Seven Goya nominations with no wins; jury prize at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival 1996[4](https://www.premiosgoya.com/pelicula/la-flor-de-mi-secreto/) • [5](https://www.biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=history&m_idx=365&page=7&pyear=1996) |
| Critical scores | 86% on Rotten Tomatoes (29 reviews); 75 on Metacritic[6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_flower_of_my_secret) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
Leo Macías (Marisa Paredes) is a successful writer of romance novels who signs her work with the pseudonym Amanda Gris. Her contract obliges her to deliver three novels a year, but she cannot manage it: instead of pink romances, as she tells her editor, what comes out is very black.[7](https://filmotecadegalicia.xunta.gal/es/filmes/la-flor-de-mi-secreto) Her husband Paco (Imanol Arias) is a military officer serving on a peace mission in Bosnia, and the marriage is in a deep crisis that Leo clings to the hope of overcoming even as the love between them fades.[7](https://filmotecadegalicia.xunta.gal/es/filmes/la-flor-de-mi-secreto)
The turning point comes through Ángel (Juan Echanove), an editor at the newspaper *El País*, who offers Leo a job as a critic for a national arts supplement. Her first assignment brings her face to face with her own alter ego, forcing an examination of her identity, her motivations, and her direction in life after Paco.[2](https://www.sonyclassics.com/flower/) Around this central thread, Leo re-evaluates her relationships with her mother, her sister, her best friend, and her flamenco-dancing maid.[8](https://mostra.org/en/arquivo/filme/8128) The ICAA synopsis describes the relationship that grows between Leo and Ángel as fundamental to the writer's recovery of her self-confidence.[1](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/es-es/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=2195)
## Cast and crew
The cast is led by Marisa Paredes (Leo), Juan Echanove (Ángel), Imanol Arias (Paco), Carme Elías (Betty), [Rossy de Palma](https://www.edgepedia.org/rossy-de-palma) (Rosa), Chus Lampreave (Leo's mother), Kiti Mánver (Manuela), Joaquín Cortés (Antonio), and Manuela Vargas (Blanca).[9](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/es-es/Peliculas/GetPdf?Pelicula=2195) Affonso Beato was the cinematographer, José Salcedo the editor, Alberto Iglesias the composer, and Wolfgang Burmann and Miguel López Pelegrín the art directors; Agustín Almodóvar produced.[10](https://www.fandango.com/la-flor-de-mi-secreto-85304/cast-and-crew)
Shooting ran from 16 January to 16 March 1995, and the director finished the shoot in Almagro, in the province of Ciudad Real.[9](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/es-es/Peliculas/GetPdf?Pelicula=2195) • [11](https://www.servimedia.es/noticias/almodovar-termina-almagro-l-rodaje-flor-secreto/1410904644)
## Place in Almodóvar's career
**A change of register.** Critics read the film as both a departure from and a continuation of Almodóvar's earlier work. Carla Marcantonio, writing in *Senses of Cinema*, calls it his eleventh feature and notes that it diverges from the colorful, campy romps that won him international acclaim, being more subdued and serious, and marks the beginning of what many critics regard as his more mature output, which continued with *[Live Flesh](https://www.edgepedia.org/live-flesh)* (1997), *[All About My Mother](https://www.edgepedia.org/all-about-my-mother)* (1999), *Talk to Her* (2002), and *Bad Education* (2004).[3](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2005/cteq/flower_of_my_secret/) An academic chapter by Ana María Sánchez-Arce argues that the film is neither an aesthetic break nor the end of Almodóvar's exploration of taboos: it remains a tragicomedy with as many satirical targets as his other work, including a couple performing traditional gender roles, the military's new human-rights image, and the socialist government then eroding workers' rights.[12](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cinema-of-pedro-almodovar/end-of-romance-la-flor-de-mi-secreto/69933399695AC0ECF1B2D65391129B06)
**Autobiography and literature.** Almodóvar said in 2024 that *La flor de mi secreto* is the film in which he speaks most directly of his Manchegan origin: Marisa Paredes plays a version of him and Chus Lampreave plays his mother.[13](https://cadenaser.com/nacional/2024/12/17/pedro-almodovar-marisa-es-parte-integral-de-mi-vida-cadena-ser/) The film's literary roots are explicit: Leo writes in the tradition of [Barbara Cartland](https://www.edgepedia.org/barbara-cartland), Corín Tellado, and Delia Fiallo, the queen of South American soap operas, and the film quotes women writers throughout.[7](https://filmotecadegalicia.xunta.gal/es/filmes/la-flor-de-mi-secreto) Almodóvar described its genesis as part of a planned trilogy of unrelated stories whose shared motif was a visit that revolutionizes a character's surroundings, and said he wanted to tell a story about pain, "the epic of pain," expressed not in grand terms but through everyday facts and small things.[7](https://filmotecadegalicia.xunta.gal/es/filmes/la-flor-de-mi-secreto) A plot detail also anticipates a later film: one character has written a book about a man killed by the daughter he tried to rape, whose mother hides the body in a restaurant refrigerator, the story Almodóvar later filmed as *Volver*.[14](https://www.sensacine.com.mx/peliculas/pelicula-13051/)
## Reception
The film competed out of competition in the Official Section of the San Sebastián Festival in 1995[15](https://www.sansebastianfestival.com/1995/secciones_y_peliculas/seccion_oficial/7/430012/es) and won the jury prize at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in 1996.[5](https://www.biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=history&m_idx=365&page=7&pyear=1996) It received seven Goya nominations, for best direction (Almodóvar), best actress (Paredes), two supporting-actress nominations (Lampreave and de Palma), art direction, makeup, and sound, and won none.[4](https://www.premiosgoya.com/pelicula/la-flor-de-mi-secreto/) • [14](https://www.sensacine.com.mx/peliculas/pelicula-13051/) Paredes won the Fotogramas de Plata award for best actress for the role.[14](https://www.sensacine.com.mx/peliculas/pelicula-13051/) In 1996 a Spanish government jury selected it, along with six other films from 1995, for a special-quality grant of 30 million pesetas.[16](https://elpais.com/diario/1996/09/15/cultura/842738402_850215.html)
Commercially, the film drew 981,846 spectators in Spain[1](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/es-es/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=2195) and 439,221 total admissions in France.[17](https://www.garance-patrimoine.fr/l/10401966) Later aggregate figures put the budget at about $4.5 million and worldwide revenue at about $19 million.[18](https://cinegraph.org/movies/the-flower-of-my-secret-1995) Critical scores have remained favorable: 86% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 29 reviews and 75 on Metacritic, with reviewers such as the *Los Angeles Times* comparing its blend of humor, tenderness, and wisdom to the films of [George Cukor](https://www.edgepedia.org/george-cukor).[6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_flower_of_my_secret) • [19](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-flower-of-my-secret/critic-reviews/) In a 2025 *El País* critics' poll of the best Spanish films of the last half century, it placed 48th.[20](https://elpais.com/babelia/2025-05-10/almodovar-una-pelicula-para-cada-espectador.html)
Marisa Paredes died in December 2024 at the age of 78; Almodóvar called her "an integral part" of his life and recalled her performance in this film as deeply moving.[13](https://cadenaser.com/nacional/2024/12/17/pedro-almodovar-marisa-es-parte-integral-de-mi-vida-cadena-ser/)
## References
1. [FLOR DE MI SECRETO, LA, ICAA Catálogo de Películas](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/es-es/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=2195)
2. [The Flower Of My Secret, Sony Pictures Classics](https://www.sonyclassics.com/flower/)
3. [Carla Marcantonio, "The Flower of My Secret," Senses of Cinema, April 2005](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2005/cteq/flower_of_my_secret/)
4. [La flor de mi secreto, Premios Goya](https://www.premiosgoya.com/pelicula/la-flor-de-mi-secreto/)
5. [Busan International Film Festival archive, 1996](https://www.biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=history&m_idx=365&page=7&pyear=1996)
6. [The Flower of My Secret, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_flower_of_my_secret)
7. [La flor de mi secreto, Filmoteca de Galicia](https://filmotecadegalicia.xunta.gal/es/filmes/la-flor-de-mi-secreto)
8. [The Flower of My Secret (1995), Mostra Internacional de Cinema em São Paulo](https://mostra.org/en/arquivo/filme/8128)
9. [FLOR DE MI SECRETO, LA, ICAA ficha técnica (PDF)](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/es-es/Peliculas/GetPdf?Pelicula=2195)
10. [La Flor de Mi Secreto Cast and Crew, Fandango](https://www.fandango.com/la-flor-de-mi-secreto-85304/cast-and-crew)
11. [Almodóvar termina en Almagro el rodaje de "La flor de mi secreto", Servimedia](https://www.servimedia.es/noticias/almodovar-termina-almagro-l-rodaje-flor-secreto/1410904644)
12. [Ana María Sánchez-Arce, "The end of romance: La flor de mi secreto," The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar, Manchester University Press](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cinema-of-pedro-almodovar/end-of-romance-la-flor-de-mi-secreto/69933399695AC0ECF1B2D65391129B06)
13. [Pedro Almodóvar: "Marisa es parte integral de mi vida," Cadena SER, 17 December 2024](https://cadenaser.com/nacional/2024/12/17/pedro-almodovar-marisa-es-parte-integral-de-mi-vida-cadena-ser/)
14. [La flor de mi secreto, SensaCine](https://www.sensacine.com.mx/peliculas/pelicula-13051/)
15. [Festival de San Sebastián 1995, Sección Oficial](https://www.sansebastianfestival.com/1995/secciones_y_peliculas/seccion_oficial/7/430012/es)
16. [Siete filmes recibirán 30 millones por "especial calidad," El País, 15 September 1996](https://elpais.com/diario/1996/09/15/cultura/842738402_850215.html)
17. [La Flor de mi secreto, Garance Patrimoine](https://www.garance-patrimoine.fr/l/10401966)
18. [The Flower of My Secret, Cinegraph](https://cinegraph.org/movies/the-flower-of-my-secret-1995)
19. [The Flower of My Secret critic reviews, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-flower-of-my-secret/critic-reviews/)
20. [Almodóvar, una película para cada espectador, El País Babelia, 10 May 2025](https://elpais.com/babelia/2025-05-10/almodovar-una-pelicula-para-cada-espectador.html)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1990s › Drama films late 1990s › Released 1995 to 1998*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license