SUMMARY

Rosita Amado is a lovely, intelligent young lady with good feelings; but as nothing is perfect in this world, she has something which marks her life and her destiny - a big nose.

She was born and lives in Chinches Bravos, a town in the Yucatán peninsula. She was raced by her great-aunt Dulce, her aunt Hortensia and her uncle Diosdado and her cousin Azucena. Her mother died when she was born and her father disappeared when she was a little child.
Juan Amado, Rosita’s grandfather, full of pain for her daughter’s death, ran away to the USA to try to forget his grief, rebuild his life and help his family in Mexico.

Juan and Rosita share a mark in the skin that identifies them as heirs of the ‘great secret of the Maya god Ek Chuah’, the great warrior and god of chocolate. This makes them the only experts of the liturgy of the chocolate manufacture, the most exquisite chocolate ever made.

When Juan Armando got to the USA he worked as a gardener in the mansion of Ann Remington, a wealthy, liberal artist full of light and widowed. They both fell in love and got married. Thanks to Juan’s technical and magical knowledge about the process of chocolate manufacture, he mounted a factory which saved the Remington family from bankrupt.

After Ann died, Juan inherited the fortune he had saved and a daughter from Ann’s previous marriage, Grace Remington, who always hated him, so she got married quite young to escape from his presence. But her marriage failed and she was left alone with a little child, Bruce Remington.

When Juan feels his death is close, he includes Rosita in his will and goes after her to ask her to continue his legacy.
This makes Grace go mad, since she’s not willing to share her fortune with anybody.

When Rosita gets the news about her grandfather’s recent death, she grieves her lost, but she also knows that she has to carry out her grandfather’s will.

Her arrival in the USA is only the beginning of a messy story full of changes, illusions, revenge, love, indifference and lots, lots of chocolate.

Source: Telemundo

OUR COMMENT

Honestly, it’s a pity that Perla Farias’ good intentions were thinned in a telenovela of a classic style with the basic outlines of a telenovela to achieve just a commercial product, which could have been something better. It’s noticeable that there’s good raw material in the plot’s structure – good dialogs, well-built characters and good rhythm, but the production and the over-performance of many actors make the telenovela be much ado about nothing.
I dare to say that if Perla Farias would have realized this telenovela with another production company and other actors the final product would have been much better; we could have even seen a great telenovela. Necessity is the mother of invention - and this seems to be true, since there are very good telenovelas made with few resources; but in contrast, with the budget Telemundo spends in dramas, they cannot make their telenovelas do much for them.

The telenovela prospers with the episodes at the beginning, which may turn out to be a caricature or mockery of other story lines, but little by little the plot starts settling and each character and member of the staff, like the dialoguers, producers and even the scene directors, start relaxing and taking their seats.

The main plot isn’t new: an ugly girl in love with a prince charming that conquers her love just to get the secret of the chocolate at first, but finally falls into Cupid’s net. We saw this plot in “Betty, La Fea” (the precursor of the dramatization of the ugly duck with an unbeatable success) and in “Mi Gorda Bella” from which the plot in which Rosita adopts a new personality after her physical makeover to take revenge on Bruce and give him a dose of his own medicine was taken. Even so, an original plot is obtained and Rosita’s ugliness and complex for her big nose is logically solved with a nose job, though it was meant to get her revenge. The transformation of the ugly girls in telenovelas is something to analyze – Betty used to hide her feeling of insecurity behind her mask to pass unnoticed and not to face the world. Instead, in “Mi Gorda Bella” it doesn’t make sense that, because of a metabolic disorder, she becomes slim, though at the end of the telenovela she’s plump again - to imply that her hero doesn’t care whether she’s fat or not.

In this respect, Rosita’s ugliness is like an excuse, or rather a challenge: Bruce is trying to conquer an ugly and lonely girl out of interest, not because he likes her. He has to conquer her and period, like it was done with Betty, so that he gets what his family wants - to recover the chocolate factory. Something which is well-achieved is the implication of Rosita’s real complex with her nose, though maybe she wouldn’t have cared about it if Bruce would have like her as she was, but having surgery to get her revenge makes her feel safer to carry out her plan.
Another subject which is correctly set out is that the secrets that make the couple split are logic and aren’t unforgivable.

Up to here, what I said is part of a classic outline with a basic structure and a small touch of originality, well-developed and with a dose of simple romanticism and a catchy song, which make a nice product. It’s a pity that while Perla obtained an exquisite product with a barely credible approach in “Juana, La Virgen”, she couldn’t achieve that here - I think the key is in the actors.

Carlos Ponce and Génesis Rodriguez don’t make us shudder. I’ve seen only two telenovelas with Génesis, “Prisionera” and this one, I ‘m not sure whether somebody told her that this is a different telenovela, that she has a new role now. The crying scenes are not bad, she does it quite well, but in the scenes where she should be smiling and acting natural she overacts.

Carlos Ponce is a little dull – I think he’s better singing, he doesn’t catch me with his sweet, blue-eyes look, or rather he leaves me stunned. His scenes are good and are saved by the good dialogs they have in the crucial scenes, but far from performing artfully and gracefully - he just makes them fine. Although the couple has a lot of scenes together and there are many bed scenes, they don’t manage to convince us that theirs is a nice love story. Curiously enough, the scenes they perform best are the quarrel scenes. Shall it be the case that they can’t stand each other?

The rest of the cast also overacts. Every time, I’m more and more convinced that this is the result of the neutral accent they have to use, which obliges them to speak slower; that’s why their performance doesn’t look really credible.

I bring out Khotán’s performance, though he always plays the villain, he has a swine quality which emphasizes it. He should be given a hero role – we would get quite a surprise if that happens. I also bring out Mauricio Ochmann’s performance; though he doesn’t play the hero he’s always fantastic.

THE BEST

The telenovela’s intentions – it wasn’t a bad script and it had a logic development but the production and the fad for globalizing the telenovela has turned it into a use-and-throw-away product and not into a great telenovela. Telemundo got complicated if their way to create competition is done by copying telenovelas the Mexican way. They’ll have to look for their own identity, but it won’t be difficult because there’s plenty of material for that.

THE WORST

The overacting of many actors - the theatrical style discredits the telenovela. Although there are more natural characters like Fabián (Mauricio Ochmann) and Bruce (Carlos Ponce), there are others that just spit their dialogs and don’t integrate themselves with the rest of the scene, like Diosdado (Ricardo Chávez) for example. I didn’t like the grandmother’s performance either (María Antonieta de las Nieves); it was too theatrical, her character wasn’t believable at all; as well as Cristina Cilley, who overacted in many occasions.
The settings don’t appeal to me either because they don’t give the telenovela any fresh air – too over-elaborated.