Word: dona
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...DONA FLOR AND HER TWO HUSBANDS...
Here's what happens. Dona Flor (Sonia Braga) is a lovely and virtuous young widow who marries a dull fellow, the local pharmacist (Mauro Mendonca). To her pretty confusion, the ghost of her randy first husband Vadinho (Jose Wilker) returns to torment her. He was a cad, a drunk and a gambler, who dropped dead from too much carnival carousing, and his only redeeming quality was that he was good at lovemaking. Death has not reformed him, and in his scapegrace way he tries to get her into bed. She is tempted, but refuses, saying that it would...
That night as she is in bed, making love rather absentmindedly to her live husband, an oaf who performs his marital duties like a man trying to park a bread van, the lecherous specter reappears to watch. The pharmacist can't see him, but Dona Flor can. Her consternation is splendid. As she rolls her eyes at him in anger and embarrassment, he sits cross-legged atop a large wardrobe chest beating time with his hands on his naked thighs and laughing like a demon...
There is no doubt about the outcome. Nor should there be: the diabolical first husband, the virtuous widow and the cloddish second husband have been dancing their dance in folk tales for thousands of years. The film's last shot is of people leaving church. Dona Flor is dressed in her best, and so is the pharmacist. Vadinho, his arm linked with Dona Flor's, is naked, and very pleased with himself...
...driven by greed and ambition, but we are given no hint of where that greed springs from. The characters barely interact; we see them only as figures moving in a dream. We never learn why Aguirre has brought his 15-year-old daughter on his fatal voyage, or why Dona Inez insisted on accompanying her husband. We never learn why the other men in the band follow Aguirre--in the end, it is clear that their fear of him drives them, but why do they support his initial rebellion? The characters are hardly developed beyond their initial introduction. Like...