A Mulher do Próximo

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Cristina (Carmen Dolores), her daughter Isabel (Fernanda Torres) and Isabel's husband, Henrique (Mário Viegas), are about to start a dinner with a classic music quartet playing live for them, at their luxurious mansion. Cristina's husband is conspicuously missing - probably taking a flight to Brasil where he has lived for several years - and Isabel is late, because of her sexual liaison with the butler, Manuel (Vítor Norte). It does not help that Rosa (Catarina Santos), the maid, is jealous of Isabel because of Manuel, and that Emília (Fernanda Borsatti), the cook, is not wishing to impose decency in a house where morals have been... too liberal. Just as the pianist (António Vitorino D'Almeida) gives the signal to attack the music piece, the quarreling family quietens down, and in the sudden silence the phone rings. Isabel takes the call - and gets upset: her father died in a road accident, along with his young companion. The family is compelled to go in a hurry to the morgue to identify the body, where the Undertaker (Carlos Gonçalves) is particularly disgusted by his work. Cristina requires to be left alone for a moment with the body of her husband, and for a minute she is curious to have a look at her younger rival, dead under the white sheet, but eventually refrains from it. Outspoken as usual, Isabel had already commented that she was the father's secretary, a girl almost her own age, pretty, and a slut. Then, Antonio (Virgilio Teixeira) arrives at the morgue to identify his daughter. When he lifts his head to the woman sitting across on a bench by the wall, and sees Cristina, both have a shock. Through a series of black-and-white flashbacks, we will get to know that these people were in love some thirty years back, but as he wanted to pursue his career in neurosurgery in the United States, she preferred to stay - and married soon after Antonio's best friend. They are reluctant to even look at each other... Later, Isabel will push her mother into one meeting after another with Antonio; Isabel seems eager to replace her absent father - now, her late father - by a very present Antonio. One day she will go as far as telling her mother that she has heard that she had been born before normal time, that is, a few months after Cristina's marriage and her break of her seven-year romance with Antonio. Cristina gets very upset with the inference that Antonio could have been Isabel's father, but won't deny it formally. Eventually they all go to a nightclub, not so much to listen to the house Singer (Teresa Salgueiro), but to drink, and talk over things past, and present. Antonio and Cristina do most of the talking, Isabel and other friends most of the dancing, and Henrique most of the drinking. Slowly, events get out of Cristina's hand.