In the best style of the comedy of manners, Dona Flor and her Two Husbands describes the night-life of Salvador, with its casinos and cabarets, the typical food of Bahia, the voodoo rites of candomblé and the mingling between politicians, doctors, poets, prostitutes and scoundrels. The scoundrel’s ghost moves in with the couple. One night, a year into her marriage, Dona Flor is stunned to find Vadinho lying naked on the bed, smirking and beckoning to her. Flor is happy with him, but there is an emptiness she cannot define. Teodoro lives only for pharmacy and his bassoon rehearsals. Ceremonious and balanced, the second husband is the very opposite of the first, as Dr. After courtship and chaste engagement, they finally marry. The chemist Teodoro Madureira emerges as a suitor. A year after Vadinho’s death, however, the body’s desires burn through the soul’s reclusion. Widowed, Florípedes Guimarães devotes herself to cooking classes at the school of Flavour and Art. For seven years of marriage she had suffered Vadinho’s shenanigans, but loved him nonetheless. Dona Flor, dressed in the garb of the traditional Baiana, cradled her husband’s corpse and sobbed. A bohemian life had reached its end: rum, gambling and nightly binges had ruined the young rogue. One Carnival Sunday, Vadinho stopped sambaing and dropped down dead.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |