Roberto Gavaldón's last film is among the less satisfactory works in his career. It is true that it does not fare the lowest score, compared to «La casa chica» (1950) or «Historia de un amor» (1956), two weepy tales dominated by extremely melodramatic performances by Dolores del Río and Libertad Lamarque, respectively. In the last phase of his career, during the permissive seventies, Gavaldón had to deal with Cantinflas, charro Tony Aguilar and sordid tales as «La madrastra» and «El hombre de los hongos». Here Gavaldón has a rather efficient cast that delivers the highly erotic story with zest, although he was more at home keeping passion and lovemaking under control, as in his intense classic «Sombra verde». Alma Muriel is the weakest actor in the cast, and she plays the leading role, an upper middle class virgin obsessed with the memory of her deceased father. When her hot, young mother (sexy Raquel Olmedo, stealing every scene she is in) reveals dad's "dirty secret", the girl loosens up, has an affair with a macho photographer (Jaime Moreno), becomes pregnant, and cheats her previous boyfriend (bland Carlos Piñar) into marriage. From then on, everything turns ugly, with an ending that may rise more than one or two eyebrows among the LGBTetc crowd. The version I saw seems "fumigated", as if almost all nudity in the movie had been cut, when it is obvious that all the players were more than willing to take their clothes off. I believe that Gavaldón was fed up with what cinema had become worldwide, and retired after completing this motion picture.
