Maria (Daniela Silverio) has just inherited the estate of her aunt
Oriana (Doris Wells), whom she claims she hardly remembers, and thus, she
wants to sell the place as soon as possible. But once there, she remembers
having spent a summer at the estate decades ago (and she's played by Maya
Oloe in the flashback sequences), and while there, she tried to figure out
the secret of her aunt, who was said to never have left the premises in all
her life and who still hates her deceased father (Rafael
Briceño) with a passion - even though resolute maid
Fidelia (Mirtha Borges) does everything in her power to keep Maria from
investigating. Eventually, though, Maria finds out everything: when her
aunt was her age (and was played by Claudia Venturini), she had fallen in
love with Sergio (Luis Armando Castillo), who was brought up at the
mansion - but he was only maid Fidelia's son and therefore no fitting suitor
for Oriana. Eventually, dad, who doesn't fail to see the erotic tensions
between his daughter and Sergio, sends him away, but Oriana catches up
with Sergio, and they make love for the first time, out in the forest. Dad
catches them though while they are at it, and he kills Sergio on the spot
and locks Oriana in. But naive dad hasn't taken into account his maid, who
wastes no time and poisons dad pretty much right on the spot becasue he
killed her son. And since
that time, Oriana and Fidelia have lived on the premises pretty much all
alone. Alone? Nope, there's a guy living in a house on the premises
who's Maria's age, and whom Maria pays a visit to (to do you-know-what) on
the final night of her visit to aunt Oriana. Only back in the here and now
does Maria figure out that the guy who has deflowered her all those years
back must have been Oriana and Sergio's son, and now she decides not to
sell the mansion ... This could have been an interesting
film about doomed love, violence and death, all neatly wrapped up in a
mystery plot. It could ahve been, but it isn't. The whole mystery
storyline is so bloody obvious it takes the film no more than 5 minutes
to give the solution away ... yet unfortunately, the movie runs for one
and a half hours, so the rest we are treated to images that seem to want
to shout out period picture while lacking any inventiveness, a
directorial effort that can best be described as stagey, and a series of
dull, self-sufficient scenes that do nothing to advance the film's story.
Well, at least the acting is pretty nice.
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