In the second half of 19th century the Portuguese writers Eça de Queiroz and Ramalho Ortigão wrote a newspaper serial under this same title in a curious way: each one wrote the respective chapters alternately. This movie is based on that serial. It intertwines it, however, with the story of the two authors writing it with a lot of incidents caused mainly because the husband of the countess involved in the story accuses them of telling true scandalous events of the countess love life. This comprehends an amorous relationship between the countess and a British officer, the countess' cousin who is in love with her and a Cuban more or less libertine woman who is trying to seduce the British officer. The story ends (this is where the movie begins) with the murder of the British officer (by the countess? by the Cuban woman?). The story is told in a confusing and incongruous way mixing the writers' fiction with the supposed reality without letting us know where one ends and the other begins. The acting is just passable. The only positive quality of the movie is the good re-creation of the the atmosphere of that epoch in terms of sceneries and costumes making it a poor chocolate wrapped in rich silvered paper.
