Sentimental romances are conventionally understood as escapist fantasies that help divert readers from their intractable problems; satire typically concentrates on those very problems, exaggerating them for comic effect. As an inveterate satirist, Almodovar is naturally suspicious of sentimentality. In his notes to the film, he writes that he is "terrified" to use a phrase like "the characters overflow with humanity" -- and with good reason. "Feel-good" stories with easily won emotional victories have become Hollywood's most successful genre of movies for adults, and independent international filmmakers like Almodovar are never going to be able to compete with the studios on this ground, even if they wanted to.

But with "The Flower of My Secret," Almodovar takes a more ambivalent view of sentimentality that allows for its appeal and its consolations while never losing sight of its limitations and frauds. When Leo delivers an irate (and somewhat confused) denunciation of her own work, the film pulls back from her: the man she's talking to, a pudgy newspaper editor named Angel (Juan Echanove), loves the very bodice-rippers she's knocking. In its own downbeat way, the film offers up Angel himself as a potential romantic escape hatch for Leo as her life comes unraveled.

"The Flower of My Secret" doesn't abandon the kind of gaudy satire that has always motivated Almodovar's best work, like "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" and "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." Leo's relatives -- a long-suffering sister (Rossy de Palma) and chatterbox mother (Chus Lampreave) -- are locked in a never-ending, high-decibel squabble that, for all its frightful intensity, carries the comic charge of any repetitious, involuntary behavior. Leo's housekeeper turns out to be a retired dancer whose ambitious son harbors an unorthodox plan to finance her comeback.

For an extra dollop of irony, Almodovar surrounds his beleaguered heroine with characters who are professional communicators. Her best friend, Betty (Carmen Elias), is a psychologist who trains doctors in the fine art of extracting organ-donor signatures from the recently bereaved. Paco himself is a NATO negotiator. But neither is able to figure out how to get Leo to face the truth of her disintegrating marriage.

Almodovar films his story with merciless closeups of Paredes' fragile face and frames it with arresting bits of contemporary Iberian pop culture: the television over a bar features a screaming contest (it is no more and no less than what it sounds like), while the street outside is thronged with striking students shouting obscene chants. It's only when the director carries his heartbroken heroine and her mother back to their ancestral village for an emotional recharging at the well of tradition that the film feels conventional.