Jaime Humberto Hermosillo's highly acclaimed third feature focuses on the stifling world of the Mexican provincial bourgeoisie in the story of a young widow, Berenice (Martha Navarro), who becomes the center of attention in her small town when she embarks on a love affair. Hermosillo skillfully builds tension from the details of daily domestic life until, when the rumors about Berenice begin to flourish--from the suggestion that she frequents the red light district wearing a black veil, to the accusation that she murdered her first husband--the tenor of her life is cruelly ruptured. Veteran actress Emma Roldan gives a marvelous performance as a crotchety old moneylender with whom Berenice is forced to live. In his films, Hermosillo paints film portraits of Mexico's middle class in the language of the middle class: melodrama, “accepted consciously by the director, and at the same time surpassed through the precision with which the relationships are established and developed. (His) characters' behavior is always open to several interpretations.... We are in the domestic world...which seems to have no greater aim than to carry on peacefully...but which in reality builds up unbearable tension...product and producer of an alienation maintained by social myths and values.... The only solution is a grand explosion...” (Tomas Perez Turrent, International Film Guide 1978)