Now it’s the turn of “Señora”, which will be soon broadcasted by RCTV International. In the previous version, the protagonists were Caridad Canelón, Carlos Mata and Mary Carmen Regueiro. The telenovela tells the story of two women separated by fate and when they meet up again they don’t know that they are mother and daughter. The first version is from the year 1988.

The current version will be stared by Ricardo Álamo (“Juana, La Virgen”), Cristina Dieckmann (“Gata Salvaje”) and Nohely Arteaga (“Cosita Rica”).

The telenovela also had its Mexican version, which was stared by Julieta Egurrola, Aylin Mújica, Fernando Ciangherotti and Héctor Bonilla.

Curiously, I read an article yesterday, “The Creole Telenovela Gave Up The Throne”, about the Venezuelan telenovelas, which were the most exported ones at an international level but now productions from other countries like Colombia or Brazil pass them over. The people interviewed put the blame on the wear of the rose-colored story of the poor Cinderella that suffers and suffers but in the end marries the rich guy. However, the Brazilian and Colombian telenovelas knew how to adapt themselves and they show more real and appropriate stories to the new days.

Perhaps it’s true that many people reject the Venezuelan telenovelas because those stories we saw twenty years ago are not very believable now and the public tends to believe that all the productions are like that. Like in any country – there are good and bad productions. There’s the Fonovideo factory that makes telenovelas like “Gata Salvaje”, “Rebeca” and “Secreto De Amor”, which are all alike, with thousands of plots in which finally, out of boredom, the protagonists always end up together.

After following these telenovelas and their success we come to the conclusion that they’re enjoyed by the Venezuelans but they don’t have the same reception in other countries, where stories with more content are preferred.

Then if you search a little, you find rose-colored telenovelas like “Juana La Virgen”, or others with social and political content, like “Cosita Rica”, which perhaps don’t have such an international impact but the followers of the genre appreciate such good products.

A proof of this is “Fuego En La Sangre”, in which the guest artists’ list is very long, and to name a few as examples, the Chilean Christian de la Fuente and Sofia Vergara appeared recently. Other telenovelas like “Al Diablo Con Los Guapos” or “Las Tontas” also joined the cameo fashion.

Honestly, we think that this fact turns the telenovela into a circus and distorts the script and the story. There have always existed cameos in the telenovelas and series, and it can be something fun and exiting to know that a renowned actor will appear in an episode or that a character from another telenovela visits a relative who turns out to be a character from another different telenovela. This isn’t new, we’ve seen it zillions of times, but generally, the appearance of the guest actor or the cameo is a short appearance. It’s true that the appearance of a singer or international actor in a telenovela or series can hook people to that chapter, attracting an audience which is not the regular follower of the story. It may be a kind of push in a certain moment of the story, but abusing this resource is not the way to channel a telenovela.

What the Mexican telenovelas are achieving is to leave the story aside - a script that people would have loved. Whatever, the hook is:

- “Did you know that Capetillo will appear tonight in “Fuego En La Sangre”?”
- “Really? And what character will he play?”
- “It doesn’t matter…. It’s Capetillo. He’ll sing and flirt with one of the actresses and the audience will be ensured, because Capetillo’s fans will come to see the telenovela.”

And it’s has been happening this way since “Fuego En La Sangre” started. Honestly, to watch a program in which singers and international artists parade around, I’d rather watch any Saturday show, which will surely be more interesting and will not confuse you, because you know what you’re going to see.

It’s a pity that these resources are being used to win rating points at any rate, because this fact only jeopardizes the audience, who is being messed around with.
We may put up with remakes that turn into awful telenovelas (though we’d prefer that they’d plagiarize the original one - they would have surely done a better job); but on top of that, if we also have to put up with meaningless telenovelas based in zillions of plots with no reason or logic, it’s a real shame.

In the quoted article, Salvador Mejía says, “We are looking for international stars to refresh the telenovela and to give the public a better product”. Up to this moment, I believed that the telenovela was valued for its actors’ talent and for the good interpretations and not for the number of well-known artists that may appear in it. It was about quality, not quantity, wasn’t it?

I think our Chava (Salvador) is at a loss – refresh the telenovela doesn’t mean that they have to eliminate the initial script, that the protagonists rarely appear and that after a hundred episodes we wonder what the telenovela was about.

What worries us in this respect is that the Mexican telenovelas are a mirror of many other production companies, like Venevision International or Telemundo, which ‘mexicanize’ their telenovelas, even if they have some raw material which could bear good fruit. We hope that this cameo fashion be temporary and that we can continue enjoying well-constructed and well-structured stories and with good performances. Don’t let the telenovela become the excuse to see the artist of the moment without caring what character he or she interprets or whether it has a relation with the story; and having us saying, “What’s the story in this telenovela?, It doesn’t matter… Bisbal is on it!!!

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.

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.

Lorena and Sara grew up together in an orphanage and love each other as sisters, though they are completely different. Lorena dreams about starting a family someday and what she most likes doing is cooking.
Sara is a materialist; she’s always been resentful about the poverty they live in the orphanage and her ambition is bigger than her scruples.
As Lorena dreams about learning cuisine she says goodbye to the nuns that raised her and goes to study gastronomy to the capital city. That same day, the mother superior discovers that Sara stole the orphanage’s money, and while confronting her, the nun dies of a heart attack.

Sara runs away with her lover and accomplice, Chalo, the orphanage’s driver, and decides to erase her traces by stealing hers and Lorena’s record. After reading them, she finds out that, while she was found in a rubbish dump, Lorena had been abandoned, without any explanation, by her grandmother, the millionaire Hortensia Armendáriz. Her first impulse is to go for Lorena and help her to confront her grandmother and fight for her rights, but then she thinks it better and decides to usurp Lorena’s place in the Armendáriz’ gastronomic empire.

Not knowing anything about her real origin, Lorena gets a job in the Armendáriz’ company as a kitchen assistant. She also meets a young doctor called Alonso, who she falls in love with and, after a while, they get engaged.

What Sara less expected was to find Lorena in the company, so Lorena’s presence is desperating for her. Sara’s mind betrays her, and little by little her burning desire to steal everything from Lorena grows, including Alonso, so she plans to make Lorena vanish off her way. Lorena suffers for her friend after learning that Hortensia, who she now despises, had abandoned Sara, supposedly. Hortensia, as far as she’s concerned, fights with all her resources to avoid facing all the harm she caused to the people close to her.

When Lorena finds out about Sara’s schemes, she realizes that she doesn’t really know this girl who she loves as a sister. As she suffers, she will courageously confront betrayals, deceptions and cruelty and will find a new hope in the person she less suspected that could lover her.

Summary taken from “Las Noticias De México”

OUR COMMENT

“Querida Enemiga” isn’t garbage, not even ‘a bit’ or ‘kinda’; maybe it’s that the word to describe it’s not that one, since “Querida Enemiga” is not one of those irritating telenovelas. “Querida Enemiga” is a good telenovela, with a good production, good interpretation… but it’s a very uninteresting telenovela, with a plot alike some zillion other plots, which don’t contribute anything; with goody characters who are so kindly good that are on the edge of skepticism and stupidity (we’re afraid they’re on the other side of the edge) and some others who are as bad and fake as their performance, so bad that the audience doesn’t believe they’re wicked, with melodramatic behaviors, those characters who are evil just because, who don’t love anybody and whose only function is to fill up a space in the script and stretch the plot with their stupid evil deeds.

Although its broadcasting is not over yet, at least in Galavisión that is where we see it, our usual readers know we don’t usually talk about a telenovela while it’s being broadcasted, but we have had the chance to watch it lately, kind of from day to day to tell you the truth, but even so we think we haven’t missed anything, because the comings and goings of the script fit in with the old radio serials, and the characters don’t have any blood running down their veins and are not interesting at all. “Querida Enemiga” is a filler telenovela, those you can sit and watch if you don’t have anything at all to do. As we don’t think it’s going to change much, we decided to write about it.

First, the story of a girl abandoned by her wicked grandmother and saved by some nuns (for God’s sake, the nuns again!) who grows into a kind and sweet orphan Snow White (Lorena de la Cruz), hated by her bosom friend (Sara, also de la Cruz, because the nuns didn’t go to a lot of trouble with the girls’ last names). It was very bad luck for Lorena to become friends with a girl who hates and envies her and just wants to harm her. What were you thinking about, Lorena, to make friends with that girl precisely? Weren’t there any other girls?

Then the story of the mother who falls in a coma, the brother who becomes an alcoholic (I’m really not sure whether he’s the brother, sorry for the inaccuracy), as the hyper mega evil girl becomes the lover of an old man and attacks again, because Sara isn’t only ambitious and selfish but also a murderer, and she’s not happy with just being rich like Scrooge McDuck and dive into her money that she also has as her objective to make Lorena fall in disgrace, who already carries the burden of being in love with Alonso, a very foolish guy, who’s always messing it up but who Lorena will end up getting married to in the end because that’s what the hero is for, though any normal girl would prefer Ernesto.
The plot of ”Querida Enemiga” is like those plots that the telenovelas’ characters tell, those characters who claim to be addicted to telenovelas, like Carmenaza in “Café Con Aroma de Mujer” or Melany in “La Ex” – quite absurd, melodramatic, baroque and exaggerated, although the production is modern, which is hard to tell.

In the last productions of Televisa, in which they pretentiously look forward to ‘modernizing’, a new element they’ve used is that there are two heroes now, and the girl can’t stop struggling to stay with either one or the other. In “Querida Enemiga” as well as in “Las Tontas No Van Al Cielo” we’re presented with a triangle, which is ‘the new’ element (though we had seen this before in, for example, “Paloma” or in “Secreto De Amor”) – the third in the group is generally a worthy opponent of the protagonist. The problem is that in both telenovelas we betted on the loser, I mean, in this telenovela we’d rather see Lorena stay with Ernesto (Jorge Aravena) and not with Alonso (Gabriel Soto) and in “Las Tontas No Van Al Cielo” we liked Patricio better (though he was quite a jinx, poor guy) than Santiago ( who is as much of a jinx as Patricio and though Santiago is pretty funny we don’t like protagonists who are clownish; we like the more moderate heroes). Anyway, on top of the fact that we don’t give a damn about this love story, the foolish protagonist marries the wrong guy. Never seen before.

THE BEST

When we talked about the telenovela “Todo Sobre Camila” we said we liked Scarlett Ortiz.
Even if we liked nothing of what we saw about her, we liked her just because, because we wanted. With Ana Layevska it happens kind of the same, though in Ana’s case we liked her in “Primer Amor A Mil Por Hora”. We like Ana Layevska and we think that she could give more of her if she would be paired with more attractive heroes (truly attractive, not just muscles).
In “Querida Enemiga”, Ana is even better than in her previous telenovela “Las Dos Caras De Ana”, where she had a role that didn’t fit her at all and was paired with the weakling Rafael Amaya; but Lorena is a quite insipid character, though she’s a girl with character. Even so, if we have to choose, we choose Ana.

Surprisingly, we also like Jorge Aravena, and we say ‘surprisingly’ because we had him labeled as a protagonist actor of garbage telenovelas, of immeasurable fiascos, of ridicule products. In “Querida Enemiga”, Aravena is quite good, we don’t know whether it is that he lost weight or what, but we think he’s even more handsome.

THE WORST

The one who has certainly lost weight is Gabriel Soto - thanks God he lost that inflatable doll aspect, or better, inflated with steroids, though he still has that horrendous dyed hair. Still in a human dimension size, Gabriel Soto has a long way to walk to become an actor. It doesn’t help him either that his character Alonso is a weak man (we don’t know whether that was the intention, but we see him that way) who gives in before any inconvenience, disinflates (how appropriate the word ‘disinflate’!) without counting the times he was deceived as if he were a fool. The scenes in which Alonso falls in desperation because Lorena’s mother is in a coma for a supposedly medical mistake are pathetic, believe me, they make you feel embarrassed for him. Lorena, do it for your mother, don’t marry him.

Having left that clear, we think that the whole effort made in “Los Protegidos” went to the production and photography and the plot has been neglected. I mean, the plot’s idea is good, but the characters aren’t properly elaborated and, at least in these first episodes, they’re schematic and shallow. The weight of the plot falls entirely on Mark Tacher, who does what he can, though it’s not much – he seems to be an alien in that family. Where does supposedly Santiago Puerta come from, with all his correctness and goodness? It’s supposed that he admires his father a lot because he is a tireless worker, but in the second or third episode we learn that the father has always been a devil-may-care charlatan, incapable of doing anything good for more than 10 minutes. And what about the sluttish sister? And where does the little brother take from that costumes’ collection? Does he do them himself? Santiago’s family is really terrible; they have very few things in common and hardly love each other - it cannot be understood that Santiago decides to give up his life ‘not to move away from them’. There are too many conflicts and too many things up in the air.

But the worst is Lina Santana’s family. The story of the Puertas was already enough for the plot, so there was no need to get the Santana family in on, with that father, an awfully sick man with clearly incestuous tendencies. Don’t you think it’s extraordinary bad luck, kind of incredible (that’s the question), that his father is promiscuous and her father has unmentionable sexual tendencies?

But the worst is that, though it’s evident that Mr. Santana is sick, his daughter doesn’t realize about it and acts as if nothing happens and as if it were great that daddy fetches her from work and that when daddy finally accepts that she can go with her boyfriend, he decides that he’ll also go with her (what a horror), and she goes and tells it to her boyfriend as if that were a super fantastic plan, to go all together jointly with a father-in-law who disrespects him every time he can, and the girl all happy. To touch a raw nerve, the stupid Lina, who since she arrives in Colombia doesn’t stop phoning in the worst moments (wasn’t it supposed that she was a psychic?) and spends the whole day doing nothing, chats with her boyfriend about every subject, even about marriage, before mom and dad (though she doesn’t see it as something bad that her parents follow her with the car when she goes out) with everybody expressing their opinions as if that were a decision that must be democratically approved - very irritating.

To take advantage of Tacher’s presence, they put some graceless bed scenes – Tacher and Orozco don’t transmit any sensation of love between them, they seem as if they were two people who are just seeing each other, and if that were the case, it would be natural for him to live his own life and act as if they’ve never met, goodbye and good luck, ‘ciao amore’, ‘hasta la vista’. It doesn’t give the impression that Santiago suffers for love, nor that Lina is the love of his life. It seems that Mrs. Uribe forgot that it’s not enough for a character just to say something to make it credible. Santiago may say anything but he doesn’t look as if he loves Lina, or anybody else in particular. It’s also not clear why he doesn’t express his doubts to Lina from the start. I mean, it’s understandable that he doesn’t say that his father is a mafioso, but when his father sends him a first class plane ticket to Colombia while he’s in Italy, he doesn’t wonder ‘where has my father taken so much money from?’ What world does Santiago live in? Don’t the forensic know how much is a first class plane ticket?

Anyway, it seems that Santiago and Lina have spent together only the times we see them together, I mean, three scenes, and that they don’t have an intimate relationship, except for the fact that they sleep together, because they never talk to each other, they don’t know anything about each other, nor had they planned anything after they were back. The normal thing would be that, when they return, a four-year-old steady couple would stay together in one of their parents’ house and not that each one goes to their own house as if those four years together would have been a summer affair. A couple living together for four years is as if they were married, and married people don’t behave that way. And if Lina’s father is so rich, how come he never went to visit her during those years and doesn’t know Santiago? And if he wants to go to New York wit them, what will they do with Lina’s sister? Freeze her like Walt Disney until they come back?

We said that Mark Tacher does what he can, but in Verónica Orozco’s case she’s not able to do anything with such a hollow, foolish character, so insubstantial and insipid. Not even her smiles are believable and when she smiles it seems as if she’s having a back tooth removed, and the fact that she’s so pleased with daddy’s involvement makes you want to hit her on the nose.

Everything is so forced, unreal and artificial that, in our modest opinion, in these first ten episodes “Los Protegidos” is a complete bore, as our Manolito Gafotas would say. Let’s hope it gets better, because if it gets worse, this is the end.

It narrates the love story between Paz Achaval Urien, a successful, powerful and rich executive, owner of the agricultural industry in which Juan Manuel Aguirre works, a humble, unstructured and passionate countryman.

Juan Manuel Aguirre is married to Gabriela, with whom he has a daughter, Tatiana. Gabriela is a brave woman that will not give up easily.

Paz Achaval Urien is married to a man she respects but does not love, Alejandro, father of her daughters Bárbara and Milagros. Paz Achaval Urien lives according to the pre-established commandments.

Juan Manuel saves Paz’s life, so she wants him to leave the country and become her bodyguard. Juan Manuel does not accept. However, Fate will make them meet again, and from that moment on their lives will never be the same. The loyalty that Juan Manuel feels for Paz, the woman he protects, and the admiration she feels for her protector, will turn into a forbidden love. It will become impossible for them to be close without being involved, without being able to fall in love.

Source: Argentinean Telenovelas

OUR COMMENT

This telenovela has, at first sight, all the ingredients for us not to give it a chance. It’s a telenovela with a very typical Argentinean structure, three or four plots, in which there are two important couples of a classist cut and in which everybody ends up living in the same house – normally too many people (it’s to save up settings) – and in which the comic part falls onto the servants of the big house; and to make it more enjoyable, there’s always a dark and mysterious matter… shake the cocktail shaker and voilà: we get an Argentinean telenovela. Anyone who has ever watched an Argentinean telenovela could perfectly think we are talking about “Manuela”, “Perla Negra” or “Nano”.

“Amor En Custodia” has all those ingredients, but all the same, as it happened with the other telenovelas we named, we don’t know for certain why they hook us up, so that we watch them complete, and when we finish watching them we don’t know why we watched such a garbage, but we swallowed it all.

“Amor En Custodia” hooks you and we do not know why. Maybe the rhythm it has, that every day something new happens, may avoid boredom, and that is why it keeps you waiting to see if he takes his decision, if the other speaks, if the protagonist gets killed and so on and you end up watching the whole telenovela.

The main story is not very original, mainly if you saw another garbage, this time in the cinema: “The Bodyguard” with Kevin Costner (alias poker face) and Whitney Houston.

The idea is the same: in this case Paz (she does not sing, thank God, because with that rough voice it is better to leave everything as it is), a successful executive that suffers an assassination attempt, decides to hire the person who saved her by chance. As a love story it is tolerable, but we see a problem: Aguirre was already happy with his family, so we do not understand why he has to go and fall in love with the hysterical Paz. They make us think that Aguirre’s marriage was something monotonous, but that is not an excuse to fall for the first person you see. We do not like how Aguirre’s wife ends so that he can stay with Paz without suffering pangs of conscience. In fact, Aguirre was already in love with Paz before his wife dies, so the ‘sin’ had already started.

There are times when the scriptwriters make us believe, at the beginning of a story, that there are some extra characters, so that we later justify the fact that the protagonists abandon their respective couples and fall for each other: I don’t think it’s necessary to kill anybody or send them to the Patagonia to break a couple.

We can understand that Paz gives herself a chance with Aguirre because her husband, another successful executive, cheats on her the whole time and then gets involved with the villain of the story. How original!

The love story is tolerable but is forced and it does not add anything new – it is just about separating two couples and making a new one with people that have nothing in common. We like the poles apart stories, when the confronting parts complement each other; but if the couple has no future together it is useless. That does not mean that the actors Laport and Sylveira, who give life to Aguirre and Paz, do it bad; we just do not like the story, though they give the plot a funny approach.

All that discussed, we would expect the juvenile plot to bring some fresh air, but the author of the story opted for repeating the same story with Paz’ daughter, Bárbara, who also gets a hot bodyguard, without commitments this time, that ends up getting involved with her. It is very redundant and repetitive that the two couples are so similar. It was supposed that Barbara and Pacheco should give the story the fresh youthful touch, but for our taste, their chemistry is zero. We don’t buy it that Nicolas Pacheco, a womanizer who has suffered for love, tries to win Bárbara while making it clear that he doesn’t want to fall for her, so why does he sweet-talk her?

The story has no sense whatsoever; apart from the episode in which Barbara stupidly marries her boyfriend and on her wedding day she makes love with Pacheco – how inelegant of Barbara, dear God! They show their story as an impossible love story, but I don’t know why; and we don’t know if it’s for all the mess, the give-and-take that in the end the couple doesn’t end together for an important reason, but as the story went, it doesn’t make sense whatsoever: first, they make us buy that they were done for each other and then, there goes the lady and gets pregnant from another man. Does anybody understand anything here? That is why Pacheco does not forgive her and end of story. Insipid, tasteless and dull.

And, as if it was not enough, Barbara’s story is made more complicated by a social illness, that is the bulimia she suffers. The topic is a serious one, and as it is typical in telenovelas, it has treated in a direct way but without making a drama – the problem is seen but, as always, everything ends fine.

About the thriller or mystery story that surrounds the telenovela, well, you can believe it if you want, but the villains are too obvious, mainly Tango that, I don’t know how anybody couldn’t tell, just by saying ‘Good Morning’ we can see he’s a mafioso. But as it is always at the end that these things are discovered, they are also a mean to justify Aguirre and Pacheco’s work as bodyguards in the story.

The same thing happens with Carolina Costas, who is very tiresome – she is the typical villain who becomes friends with half of the cast, giving wrong advice to everybody to arouse a mess. How annoying!

And to finish, as a good Argentinean telenovela, we cannot miss the dose of mothers looking for their lost children or making it up with them, as in the case of Tatu and Nicolas’ mother. Everybody ends up being related to everybody.

THE BEST

Even though Soledad Sylveira has an unpleasant voice and her performance is a little vicious, we liked the way she acted; at least she looks professional, and is very likeable throughout the telenovela alongside Laport, since they do not do it bad as the mature couple – they bring freshness and spontaneity but they do not inspire that tenderness we’d like.

THE WORST

Well, as we have already said, though it was a successful story, we do not really understand why it was so. So we will comment on the trivial things, like Osvaldo Laport’s wardrobe, who wears Capoeira pants that do not leave anything to imagination. Wordless.

The final episode: the forced death of all the villains, as if it was an episode of “The Sopranos”.