"The Flower of My Secret"
Written and directed by Pedro Almodovar
(Sony Pictures Classics)

By SCOTT ROSENBERG

A title like "The Flower of My Secret" so brazenly suggests the overripe heavings of the romance genre that you're likely to assume a certain irony, if not outright satire, in its use. (The name could as easily have been "The Secret of My Flower.") The assumption only strengthens when you know that the film is by Pedro Almodovar, the Spanish writer-director who has made a career of outrageous provocations delivered with impish playfulness.

So as "The Flower of My Secret" unfolds its tale of a middle-aged romance writer's trials of the heart, the surprise lies in the story's growing earnestness. Almodovar, who in the past has made dark comedy out of jealousy and infidelity and even rape and suicide, here casts a less absurdist, more empathetic eye on his characters. The world they navigate is still full of bizarre coincidences and random cruelties, but the filmmaker's stance is a little less distant, the laughter degrees warmer and the emotions correspondingly magnified.

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