The genre of moody musical melodramas known as rumberas could be kitsch but they were far from comedies. The films, like their heroines on screen, were socially condemned by the middle class, becoming forbidden pleasures for their cult following. Aventurera is considered the epitome of the genre and features a dynamic performance by the Cuban rumba dancer Ninón Sevilla, the queen of the cabareteras, cast against Andrea Palma. Sevilla was famous for her angry outbursts, which are well used in a film that presents a devastating indictment of bourgeois hypocrisy. The film follows the fall and rise of a talented girl from a “good” family, Elena (Sevilla), who becomes disenchanted when her upstanding mama reveals a down-and-dirty side. Becoming a cabaret dancer, Elena is spiraled into a net of vice and oppression, but slowly she becomes the spider and others, the flies. It seems to be her destiny to unveil the secret, vice-laden lives of bourgeoisie like her mother.