SUMMARY

In the beautiful Tequila town, state of Jalisco, the town which was named after the product obtained after the distillation process, a burning, pure and strong love will born.

Teresa Hernandez, who everyone calls Gaviota, is a day laborer who travels the country with her mother, Clara, working in the harvests. Every year, the go
to Tequila for the ‘jima’ (harvest) of the blue agave in the La Montalveña estate, property of Mr. Amador, the Montalvo’s patriarch, an ancestral family in the tequila production business. At the beginning of the story, Mr. Amador knows his end is coming, so he goes to spend his last days in the land he so much loves.

When Mr. Amador dies, his family gathers for the funeral. His grandsons, Rodrigo and his cousin Aaron, come from London, where they are doing a doctorate. The cousins grew up as brothers, but the grandfather’s will awakes an ambition in Aaron, since the control of the family’s fortune will finally go to the first-born male fathered by one of them. Knowing that Rodrigo has never made love, Aaron feels confident; however, Gaviota’s arrival in Rodrigo’s life will change his fate.

When they meet, Rodrigo and the beautiful ‘jimadora’ get the call of love for the first time – their bodies awake a dominating passion and they both give themselves over to it. Rodrigo promises Gaviota that he will come back in one year’s time, when he finishes the doctorate, to marry her. Some time later, Gaviota realizes she’s pregnant. Without the slightest idea of how huge the world is, the innocent young lady decides to go to England to look for Rodrigo. Deceived by a local photographer that promises to help her, Gaviota falls in the hands of a white slavery gang, who send her to a brothel in Paris.

The brave young lady escapes and starts the search for the man she loves. Alone, not knowing English, the only things that will hold her up in the worst moments are her faith and her love. She’s at a loss as regards the life in the big city, where ambition, resentment and lies reign; a lifestyle which could turn into stone the innocent heart that started that fateful trip. Helped by a generous Italian and a group of religious English women she returns to Mexico, only to find a very different life from the one she had left behind in Mexico – a new life of pain and disappointment. … “Destilando Amor”

Source: esmas.com

OUR COMMENT

“Destilando Amor” is the second Mexican version of the telenovela by Fernando Gaitán “Café Con Aroma De Mujer”. In the year 2001 TV Azteca made its version “Cuando Seas Mía”, and now in 2006 its competition, Televisa, has made its own.

This new version is safe because the original script is really good, and they limited to follow the script quite faithfully, with some differences like, instead of setting it in the coffee elaboration trade, it was in the tequila elaboration trade. The new version also reduced the number of episodes of the original telenovela.

If we compare it with the version from TV Azteca, this one is better produced and, although they tried to do something original, they didn’t. Anyway, a good and well-produced version was achieved. The performances of the whole cast are self-restrained – actresses who usually perform terrifically, like Ana Patricia Rojo, were not good enough in this occasion. There are some good actors who do stand out, like Alejandro Tomassi (Bruno) and Olivia Bucio (Fedra), who give an original and different touch to Rodrigo’s uncle and aunt. It’s impossible to stop thinking that these two actors can leave you speechless while interpreting two roles of a quite simple style, quite different from their characters in their previous telenovela “Alborada”, in which they interpreted classic period characters.

I leave the protagonist couple for the end. Even if the chemistry is as good as everything else in the telenovela, the couple was a casting error. Obviously, it’s very hard not to think about the couple from the original telenovela, interpreted by Margarita Rosa de Francisco and Guy Ecker, who had such an incredible chemistry and captivated the public in a very special way - few times in the history of the telenovelas there’s been such a lovely couple. Angelica Rivera and Eduardo Yañez don’t achieve that feeling, that feeling that makes you shudder when you see them – with them you just see a good interpretation and nothing else.

Another thing is that, although the protagonists of “Café Con Aroma De Mujer” were not any young when they did the telenovela, they fitted the 25-year-old young people profile – they were believable. Instead, Eduardo Yañez, even if he looks really well and doesn’t look the 48 years old he is, he cannot make us believe he’s twenty-something.

Angelica Rivera isn’t safe from the flames either - I don’t really know why the producers insist on giving this girl protagonist roles; I believe that Angelica doing the role of sister or friend would be better and would give in more of herself than when doing roles such as the villain in “Mariana De La Noche” or protagonist roles like in “La Dueña” - she’s not at the level for that. You may say I’m repeating myself, but her performance doesn’t go further than what could be learnt at a good drama class following the teacher’s instructions. As regards the age subject, they cannot make us swallow hers either.
Another subject is the musical. It may be that not everybody likes how Margarita Rosa de Francisco sings, but Angelica does it worse, and you can tell.

THE BEST

That actors like Alejandro Tomassi and Olivia Bucio know how to make the most of their secondary characters and give a reason to go on with the telenovela.

THE WORST

That the people from Televisa insist on making new versions; I don’t really know which is their intention – whether they believe they can improve the production of this telenovela with their budget and achieve a better and more attractive product than the previous one, but in any case they should bet on improving the performance. It seems they have a certain panic for change – they just keep producing versions instead of betting on an original script.