Also Directed by Valeria Sarmiento
Chilean director Valeria Sarmiento weaves a tale of love, betrayal, and civil unrest centering around a nightclub in 1950s pre-Communist Cuba in her 2002 romantic drama Rosa La China. Notorious businessman Santiago Ordenez (Juan Luis Galiardo), who primarily goes by the nickname Dulzara, operates a high-profile club/casino with the protection of some local politicians with whom he has dubious relationships. A large portion of the club's success is due to its star singer, Rosa (Luisa Maria Jiminez), who also happens to be Dulzara's lover. Rosa, however, has recently started into another affair with a somewhat younger womanizer named Marcos (Abel Rodriguez).
Passionate romance, brutal treachery, and selfless nobility are set against the background of Napoleon’s 1810 invasion of Portugal in Valeria Sarmiento’s intimate epic.
The story of the adventures, in the twilight of the eighteenth century, of a singular couple formed by a little orphan with mysterious origins and his young Italian nurse of a similarly uncertain birth. They lead us in their wake, from Rome to Paris, from Lisbon to London, from Parma to Venice. Always followed in the shadows, for obscure reasons, by a suspicious-looking Calabrian and a troubling cardinal, they make us explore the dark intrigues of the Vatican, the pangs of a fatal passion, a gruesome duel, banter at the court of Versailles and the convulsions of the French Revolution.
A brutal sexual murder of a minor revolts the anger of the town. On the other hand, a psychologist, Sofia Belmar is not only shocked by the event, but this also brings back some of her more gruesome memories.
The story of a neurotic bachelor who, after marrying a beautiful woman, submits her to increasingly deranged accusations of infidelity and pleas for forgiveness.
The film revolves around the concept of soap opera. Its structure is based on the assumption that Chilean reality does not exist, but rather is an ensemble of soap operas.
A well-bred young woman who prizes the virtue of fidelity remains faithful to the doctor who deflowers her, even after he marries her invalid sister.
Madeleine is with her lover, Jean-Paul, when her husband arrives home and catches the two together. Madeleine kills her husband and tells Jean-Paul to flee before the police arrive. After Jean-Paul drives away, he picks up a hitchhiker. When the car, stolen by the hitchhiker, explodes, police believe the dead hitchhiker is Jean-Paul. Madeleine takes up with Jean-Paul's brother, Bastien, while Jean-Paul, arriving in Strasbourg, is mistaken for the heir to a fortune. The detective on the case spends more time writing crime novels than investigating real-life crimes.
In the autumn of 1810, the French forces of Marshal Masséna are invading Portugal and are temporarily halted by the Anglo-Portuguese army under Viscount Wellington at the Battle of Bussaco. As a bitter winter approaches, Wellington withdraws his troops towards the fortifications he has prepared in secret at the Lines of Torres Vedras. Using a scorched earth defence, he forces the inhabitants to evacuate the land in front of the Lines and destroys all supplies which could be useful to the French. The film illustrates these dramatic events by a series of vignettes which show the effects on combatants, both regular soldiers and guerrillas, and on the civilian population.
A man whose wife has committed suicide, appears to him as a ghost. The ghost follows him everywhere, under the bed, under tables… After seeing the ghost so frequently, the man begins to resemble her.
