The intro to the Colombian telenovela Newly Rich, Newly Poor: a nurse mixes up babies at the hospital; rich guy in a bathrobe ignores his frustrated girlfriend (so far, so good); he dumps a pile of file folders on the desk of his overworked secretary; who goes home to her auto-mechanic husband; who yells at his coworkers at the auto shop. It goes on like that for another 10 scenes; wait -- in one of them, the rich guy hugs another guy? A same-sex couple? I'm in.
Scene 1: Many years before. Rico Bernardo, his wife Antonia, and their chauffeur are driving through the countryside, looking for a hospital: she's about to give birth. Meanwhile, pobre Leonidas (Hugo Gomez) and his wife Esperanza are also...well, you know. They arrive at a small-town health center simultaneously; boozing nurse Lucero assists with the births, then mixes up the babies.
Montage of the boys growing up, one rico, the other pobre.
Scene 2: Today. Rico Andres (Martin Karpan, left) wakes up in his palatial bedroom, works out, checks the stock market; pobre Brayan wakes up on a rollaway bed in his parents' bedroom, worries about the rent being three months overdue, and showers (the water cuts off halfway through). Some nice beefcake shots of both men.
Scene 3: Rico Andres points to what he wants on the breakfast buffet so the maids can fill his plate, then yells at them for preparing his eggs with yolks. He reads a magazine with a cover story about him, then grabs his assistant or boyfriend Hugo (Herbert King, left) and leaves for the office.
Meanwhile, pobre Brayan (Jhon Alex Toro, below) has a happy, loving breakfast with his family: his father, his brother, and two women whom he kisses on the lips and calls "sexy." Mother, wife, sister, daughter? Who knows?
Scene 4: Andres drives to work, being interviewed on the radio. His company made a profit of 100,000,000 last year (American dollars, not Colombian pesos). To what does he attribute his success? "Hard work." "But many people work hard." "Nonsense! Poor people are just lazy or stupid. Anyone can be rich if they want to be." This is the Horatio Alger myth, ignoring the institutional inequalities that have a profound effect on your life chances. Of course, Andres will find out about them soon enough.
Brayan, his brother, and one of the women he kissed ride the bus to work -- they work for Andres! They listen to the radio interview. "It's all nonsense," they say. "Hard work has nothing to do with it. The key to success is being born into a rich family!"
Scene 5: The nurse Lucero, in a dimly lit bedroom surrounded by crucifixes and rosaries. Now that she is dying, she wants to tell the secret about the babies. How could she know? Did she make the switch on purpose? And why tell them now? The two families have been raising the boys as their own for about 30 years. It's like being adopted.
Scene 6: While brother and the kissed woman rush to work at Andres' company, Brayan is still on the bus. He and his new seatmate comment on the sexiness of a woman on a poster, Fernanda Sanmiguel. Brayan prays that "someday that body will be mine." I think he means he wants to own her, not have a body like hers.
Whoops, turns out that Fernanda is Andres' girlfriend, but he's not interested in having sex with her, so she's having an affair with his cousin Mateo (Andres Toro) -- right in the office. She has to hide under a desk when Andres comes in. She overhears that Andres is planning to propose at the party next week. Fernanda is in her underwear throughout! Yuck!
When Andres leaves, Fernanda and Mateo discuss their plan: she will marry him, then divorce him and get half of his fortune. Then they will move to Aruba together.
Scene 7: Down in the secretarial pool. This is a very sexist company! The kissed woman is passing out invitations to her own party, a Christmas Rumba. One of the secretaries makes fun of Andres "the robot" just as he is walking by, and gets fired. The kissed woman fumes.
Scene 8: Pobre Brayan finally makes it to his janitorial job -- late for the ninth time in ten days. His boss fires him. "That's ok. I'm destined for greater things." Foreshadowing.
Meanwhile, the kissed woman -- who finally gets a name, Rosmery or Rochi -- is praying to her patron saint that the abrasive, overbearing Andres doesn't select her as his new secretary. But she speaks English, and she's taking a course in international finance, so she's the most qualified! Gulp! Andres selects her, and then wonders why she is so obviously disgusted, but she can't admit that she hates him, or she'll be fired. He stares in hetero-horniness as she leaves; she must be Brayan's wife or girlfriend, so they will be competing to see who gets to "own" her after the switch.
Wives and girlfriends as property: very retro sexism.
Scene 9: Pobre Brayan goes home to yell at his dad for losing money on another crazy get-rich scheme: selling thongs to men in Finland. Why is that crazy? Sounds homoerotic.
The landlady, who looks like a drag queen but is played by a woman (Rosemary Borhorquez), suggests that Brayan cover the back rent he owes by having sex with her. He rejects her and goes to bed.
Scene 10: Andres' Mom calls. She wants to know why he is still in the office in the middle of the night: he's working, of course. "But tomorrow is Christmas. Everyone takes the day off." "Not here, Mom. No one gets off for Christmas at my company." Is the Ghost of Christmas Past about to appear, Mr. Scrooge?
Scene 11: Morning. Kissed-woman Rochi talks to the other kissed woman, Ingrid, who is her younger sister. Finally, they clarify the relationship. Now I just need to know if Rochi is Brayan's mother, wife, or sister, and I'll have the family figured out.
Rochi prays to her patron saint to let her marry Brayan, so she's his girlfriend. Finally! But wait...is Brayan living with Rochi's family, or is Rochi's sister living with them? Plus the brother (Mauricio Velez) has the same last name as Ingrid. So is he her husband or brother? And if so...I'm completely lost.
Scene 12: Andres' Mom is worried: "he's become so strict, so rigid, so passionless about the good things of life. He's nothing like my late husband, who loved the holidays."
Suddenly she gets a fax from Lucero, the nurse who delivered her son. "I have a secret that I need to share with you before I die...." The end.
What happens next: They switch everything: houses, jobs, families, and girlfriends. That makes no sense. In this situation, Mom might decide to give Brayan some of his biological father's money, and maybe a sinecure job at the company, but Andres is the one trained in finance. And the girlfriends?
The newly poor Andres struggles to survive, the newly rich Brayan struggles to "keep it real," everyone gets new relationships (Rachi starts dating Daniel Arenas, top photo). And there are various other soap opera plotlines to fill in 190 episodes to date.
Gay characters: None. Andres rejects his girlfriend because his heart is "three sizes too small." He warms up.
The same-sex couple in the intro: Newly rich Brayan goes into his new family's living room, kisses his mother, and then puts his arm around Hugo, his new assistant.
I could not make it beyond the annoying theme song
ReplyDeleteAnd of course stupid people can't be smart, so by his own logic, some poor people are indeed incapable of becoming rich.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find interesting is rich people who somehow think they earned their inheritance, or that they built the roads their business used. It's fucking taboo in this country to acknowledge the government builds and maintains roads!