Dishonor

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Flora María Peralta (Fanny Navarro) is assigned to care for Isabel (Tita Merello) the wife of the rich architect Carlos Dumond (Jorge Rigaud), whom she accuses of the careless driving behind the accident that condemned her to a wheelchair for life three years ago, and of having lovers and never kissed her again since the accident. Isabel suspects Flora of being one of her husband's lovers, and indeed one night, despite being wheelchair bound, she manages to ramp up to Flora's bedroom when she was with her husband. Isabel faints. Shortly after the incident, Flora drives the wheelchair into the lift's cage - and Isabel dies in the three story fall, as the cabin was not there, due to a mechanical malfunction as the brief inquest determines. Flora does not know that the accident was prepared by the cunning architect, who did not want to face a divorce that would strip him of all the couple's assets. Therefore, Flora is accused of murder by negligence, and sent to prison - where she experiences the dramatic and harsh conditions of a woman's prison. Roberta (Golde Flami) is one of the women without men who makes a pass at the new girl, "You're going to find someone soon, to take care of you." But then she takes pity on Flora, and decides to protect her just as friends. One day she will get into a fight to prevent another inmate to beat up Flora. She's seen in prison by Rigaud, who doesn't show any intention to help her out. The Warden (Antonia Herrero makes the inmates' lives even more miserable with her strict discipline and disproportionate penalties. One winter day she subjects a group of inmates to a cold shower by the safety hose. In consequence, a woman who had pneumonia, dies. The doctor refuses to sign the obit certificate, and demands an inquest, telling the Warden: "The time when justice stopped at the prisons' doors, is now past." The arrival of a new warden (Mecha Ortiz) in charge of inspecting the prison's conditions and how the new rules had been implemented, or not, gives the inmates some hope. It will be under her charge that Flora's pregnancy by her former boss, attains a stage that forces her to take desperate action: to escape, so that her baby will not be born within prison walls, and to kill Carlos Dumont. Flora escapes with the warden's revolver, and confronts Rigaud at the doorstep of his large mansion. She is unable to shoot him, but he is armed, and shoots her. She walks haggardly in the night, under heavy rain and thunders, and falls on the pavement. The happy-end is an hymn to the new penal system being implemented in the country then.