Mulheres Apaixonadas

This soap opera, written by the genius Manoel Carlos, tells the story of several passionate women and their families while also taking good care of serious social issues such as the care and welfare of the elderly.

Some of the shocking tabus in the lives of the women in this primetime soap opera can be found among alcoholism, domestic abuse, obsessive jealousy, lesbian adolescents, a relationship with a much younger man, platonic love to a priest... I could go on and on...

The lives of these "Women In Love" have been causing tremendous fuss in the Brazilian media, and it's got all the right ingredients to be a successful project.

For those who enjoy a soap opera, Brazil is fertile ground, as the overwhelming majority of general TV channels in the country transmit, on average, four soap operas daily. Invariably, much of this material eventually goes around the world, being bought and broadcast in other countries. One of the most permeable markets for Brazilian teledramaturgy is, of course, my country, due to its cultural and linguistic proximity. I watched "Mulheres Apaixonadas" only twice: firstly in its premiere in Portugal, later when it was reprised, around 2016.

The plot consists of several women living in several romances. The main one is lived by a woman, recently divorced, who falls in love with an old boyfriend whom she had left to get married. It is a case to say that she only valued him many years overdue. The plot is not improbable, this happens often, but it is something so banal that makes soap operate quite annoying, at least for me. Another pearl of Manoel Carlos's uncreative mind, which has the particular craze of calling "Helena" to almost all the female heroines of the soap operas he writes. And yes, you can believe that there is a rich doctor playing a determining role in the plot, as it happens a lot in this writer's novels.