Manolo Caro has been making a name for himself as an irreverent filmmaker. And with film titles like Elvira, te daría mi vida pero la estoy usando (literally: “Elvira, I’d give you my life but I’m currently using it”), La vida inmoral de la pareja ideal (Tales of an Immoral Couple) and No sé si cortarme las venas o dejármelas largas (I Don’t Know Whether to Slit My Veins or Leave Them Long) it’s not hard to see why. He’s gotten to work with the likes of Luis Gerardo Méndez and Rossy de Palma, but his greatest casting coup may well be his leading lady in his first ever Netflix show, the Spanish-language comedy La casa de las flores. Basically getting her out of retirement, the young Caro has recruited none other than Verónica Castro, arguably Mexican telenovela royalty.
Castro plays the matriarch of the de la Mora, a picture-perfect family that owns a flower business and seems to have nothing to hide. Well, except for her husband’s mistress. Former mistress, actually, since she hangs herself at the flower shop, kickstarting a slew of steamy and lurid revelations that show family dysfunction at its best. The satire, as the show’s first trailer suggests, won’t just be mining suicide and adultery for laughs. Spanish actor Paco León plays an ex-boyfriend of one of the de la Mora daughters who — in a move that already feels outdated for queer 2018 TV — is transitioning. So expect to see the hunky actor in heels and wigs throughout the show.
The quippy, colorful show looks like a modern comedic telenovela. With lots of striking monochromatic costume looks, fabulous wigs, and plenty of floral scarves, we’re due for the kind of Castro renaissance we didn’t know we needed. Add in a subplot about a side business also called “La casa de las flores” (this time a cabaret), casual use of drugs, and sexy same-sex scenes that have become necessary in edgy, modern Mexican TV fare, and you’ve got yourselves a family comedy unlike any other. Think of it as what would happen if Almodóvar finally caved and wrote a TV show, sprinkled some of Las Aparicio family melodrama in, and decided that it needed some of the queer vibe that Paco León’s own films have been mining. Not for nothing is the trailer scored to Baccara’s “Yes Sir I Can Boogie.” Check out the full trailer below and try not to lose it when you get to the Selena “Amor prohibido” joke that comes at the end.
La casa de las flores premieres August 10, 2018 on Netflix.