SUMMARY

Maria Teresa Montilla, a young, refined and cultured woman and a great executive as well, is the only heir to a powerful business group which is unfortunately going bankrupt. When she believes everything is lost, her ill father confesses he owns a farm in the Llano, which is now their only hope to get them out of their financial ruin. The ranch “La Tormenta” is managed by her father’s godson, Santos Torrealba, an honest man, loyal to his friends but a bit rude and brute – a man born in the country.
Since the moment Maria Teresa is in charge of the ranch her life will change for ever after meeting Santos, a man who is her pole apart at first.
On the other hand, Santos, a hardened womanizer, never thought he could feel anything alike to what he starts feeling for such a refined woman.
But for Maria Teresa, the hard life in the farm will be anything but easy to carry out. The ranch is coveted by many people, since in its limits lies a mine of petroleum and it also serves for many people as a smuggling area; therefore a lot of people will try to avoid that Maria Teresa and Santos live happily in that place.

OUR COMMENT

All in all: ridiculous and stupid. A telenovela which was thought to have a good script owing to the amount of money spent on the ‘stars’ and on the production, with a more than irregular result.
The Telemundo’s scriptwriters have us used to see a first half of a telenovela made from a good script, with outstanding performances and sensible dialogs but we don’t know whether it’s the audience who asks for a change of road or whether the script wasn’t finished or whether it is for a mysterious reason that the telenovela falls apart halfway through.
There are too many characters and too many plots which, though at first they are shaped and outlined then they become blurred and even disappear from the telenovela.

“La Tormenta” is not an exception; we’ve seen this phenomenon in other opportunities, in telenovelas such as “Te Voy A Enseñar A Querer” or “Pasión De Gavilanes”, which at a given moment lost their bearings.

The protagonist couple promised more at the beginning than what we actually saw later. Meier is the most pertinent and correct of the whole telenovela, saving his role as better as he can throughout the telenovela’s progress, mainly at the end.
Natalia Streignard, in the role of Maria Teresa Montilla, doesn’t do it bad; although I think she improves in the scenes with actors like Meier or the nanny than when she acts alone – she looks like a five-year-old girl reciting poetry, without taking into account the embarrassment of interpreting a thirty-year-old virgin woman (instead of being simply an imbecile).
Another one that follows this path is Eileen Abad (Valentina), a young Venezuelan actress laureated with awards for her performance, which honestly makes you feel embarrassed for her, for her interpretation of a young, pure and innocent lady (Who’s idea was it to make her wear pigtails?).

The initial plot in which Maria Teresa Montilla is ruined and must manage a ranch which she had no idea about, along with a rude and quite ignorant foreman, can be attractive. But the amount of secrets and mysteries which refute other secrets and mysteries, instead of giving the plot unexpected U-turns, it bores to death. I think it is something good for a script the fact that there are some secrets which awake the audience and produce a U-turn, giving the story a new air, but in this case they just entangle the story and make the audience get lost, not knowing who is the bad one any more and starting doubting whether you really want to know it. And you finally get tired of it, thinking the telenovela is pulling your leg.

I will highlight the performance of some of the actors who, though their roles and plots in which they are involved are weak, I think it would be good not to lose track of them.

• Didier Van der Hove: He makes a quite good performance. An actor who surprises that, having a good body as he has, he’s not playing more roles, not only secondary roles but also as hero. In the telenovela there are some lady-killers, like Marcelo Buquet who, apart from not being attractive, acts in a quite constrained way. It’s a pity that he’s killed in the telenovela because the fact that he is Montilla’s right hand and then he turns out to be a wicked villain, would have squeezed dry the plot if we would have discovered this fact like a hundred episodes later. I think he should have lasted longer because, as the father’s murderer, a mysterious suspense ‘game’ could have been created around him. Generally, it’s more effective that the protagonist blindly believes in her own executioner, but if she finds it out right away the character has obviously no sense of being any longer.

• Agmet Scaff: He’s simply brilliant. It’s a pity that his role is a bit blurred at the end, but the scenes of Alirio with Solita are really hilarious, with a very funny and comic complicity. He gives grace and freshness to the telenovela, as the plot about the mistake as regards Miguelón’s sexual identity lasts. Once made clear, that the story about Miguelón isn’t true, this plot disappears, giving us the feeling that they’re pulling our leg again.

• Iván Rodriguez: He plays Cipriano Camacho. This Colombian actor, who we’ve already seen in other telenovelas like “Café Con Aroma De Mujer” or “Te Voy A Enseñar A Querer”, is quite good – he gives credibility to his civil governor character. He’s also the element of criticism in this telenovela, or at least the most credible, because if there are others, we haven’t almost seen them. The fact that a civil governor is corrupt and is a liar, far from being the one that sets the example for the people, gives realism to the character.

• Bibiana Navas: The actress who plays Solita also performs in a natural and fresh way. The episodes in which she finds out that Miguelón changed his sex are really funny and she laughs the whole time.

• Luis Geronimo Abreu: The actor who plays Miguelón Camacho. This is another actor wasted in small roles, though he does it well, and he’s quite attractive. Either the Spanish taste is different or the producers’ criteria are others when they look for an actor to play the protagonist or they choose the more remarkable actors to be the supporting actors. I think his role was pulled out of a sleeve – I still believe that the original idea was that Miguelón actually had had the change of sex, which created a paradox with his father, a severe manly soldier; but we don’t know whether it was because of the audience or the morale that the producers didn’t dare to keep the sex change subject; therefore they then created a male character who played ‘the real’ Miguelón.

The end of the story also deserves a criticism – I think it’s quite regrettable that they had us for like forty episodes with the protagonist bandaged, since Steignard had left the telenovela. I think that there the telenovela was at the point in which it was easy and, I think, a good solution to end it with dignity and not in the way it ended - it was unbelievable the way in which the scriptwriters messed about with the audience.

THE BEST

The very good performances and the gift of exceeding their dialogs of Crhistian Meier (Santos Torrealba), Agmeth Scaff (Alirio), Bibiana Navas (Solita) and Iván Rodríguez (Cipriano Camacho).

THE WORST

The story in itself can’t be held from any where – too many characters, too many blurred plots, etc. – a very irregular telenovela. It seems the producers forgot that the telenovela is a love story, and putting too many plots about intrigues, murders and others, bores the audience and loses interest.

We should make some comments about the wardrobe, starting with Maria Teresa Montilla, supposedly doing a tremendous effort dressed as a model, constantly showing off everything that can possibly be shown to make the farm workers respect her, we guess.
Valentina’s wardrobe, with those skirts, those tops and those boots; and also her mother’s, who doesn’t take off the poncho and the hat not even to dine – we had to point this out.

The supposedly age difference (which didn’t existed) between Marcelo Buquet, as Simón Guerrero, and his supposed mother, Edelmira, who is his stepmother but is his same age (or maybe younger than him) –he calls her ‘mother’.
The same thing happens with Aura Cristina, who plays Bernarda Ayala, and Meier, who in “Luna” they play two lovers (supposedly with a small age difference), but in this telenovela she looks as if she got older at a supersonic speed and she plays his mother-in-law.
The role of Trinidad Ayala, cornier than a poodle with pink ribbons in its hair; and Natasha Klauss’ wig which looks as if it was bought in an ‘Everything For A Dollar’ store.