The return of husbands past to haunt the present with virile humor is a staple of screwball comedy, but Cary Grant and Ralph Bellamy never met like this! Bruno Barreto's ribald comedy, directed when he was only 23 from a Jorge Amado novel, and a smash hit in the States, gave us one of cinema's true blithe spirits, a man whose dissipation is so complete, so pure, and so free of guilt or compunction, we can only welcome his return from the grave. He is called back by his widow Flor, or rather by her unfulfilled desires in her second marriage, to a devoted pharmacist whose lovemaking is just ho hoãm. The Bahian colors, florid carnival costumes, and palpable flavors (with cooking instructions: bring a pad and pencil) are a thin mask for entrenched social conventions that Dona Flor subversively flaunts in making her uninhibited secret life her reality.