Rosario is lovelessly married to an authoritarian man older than her. They have a little boy, Carlito,
who is also a victim of his father's excessive severity. One day, Rosario falls in love with a good and
attractive man. She decides to leave everything and follow the man she loves to Brazil. It is then that
her husband has a heart attack...
Very paradoxical, this film. For about forty minutes, Maupassant's novel "Pierre et Jean" is treated as a cheap Mexican melodrama. After "Los Olvidados", this immortal masterpiece, seeing Buñuel forced to do drudge work is a heart-breaker for the demanding cinephile. On the other hand, the popular audience of the time must have loved the string of ready-made situations, the conventional characters and the hamming actors. But when, after forty minutes, everything seems lost, Don Luis suddenly wakes up. Inspired by the cruelty of the situation imagined by Maupassant (one brother inherits a large sum of money and the other nothing), he begins to rock the boat. The one he is interested in is Carlos, the robbed one: jealous, perverse, ferocious, he sets about, like an exterminating angel, destroying bit by bit the family unit. Joaquin Cordero's chilling performance makes Carlos join the cohort of the Buñuelan characters dynamiting the established order. The mother's final discourse, claiming free love and thus rejecting the conjugality imposed by society, is also a break with the painful conformism of the first part. The cinema-lover is reassured; the popular audience, as for them, must have been disoriented and left the cinema dissatisfied. Yes, decidedly, very paradoxical, this film.
Very paradoxical, this film. For about forty minutes, Maupassant's novel "Pierre et Jean" is treated as a cheap Mexican melodrama. After "Los Olvidados", this immortal masterpiece, seeing Buñuel forced to do drudge work is a heart-breaker for the demanding cinephile. On the other hand, the popular audience of the time must have loved the string of ready-made situations, the conventional characters and the hamming actors. But when, after forty minutes, everything seems lost, Don Luis suddenly wakes up. Inspired by the cruelty of the situation imagined by Maupassant (one brother inherits a large sum of money and the other nothing), he begins to rock the boat. The one he is interested in is Carlos, the robbed one: jealous, perverse, ferocious, he sets about, like an exterminating angel, destroying bit by bit the family unit. Joaquin Cordero's chilling performance makes Carlos join the cohort of the Buñuelan characters dynamiting the established order. The mother's final discourse, claiming free love and thus rejecting the conjugality imposed by society, is also a break with the painful conformism of the first part. The cinema-lover is reassured; the popular audience, as for them, must have been disoriented and left the cinema dissatisfied. Yes, decidedly, very paradoxical, this film.