Last night in Venezuela RCTV (now international) broadcast the final episode of Mi Prima Ciela, written by Pilar Romero as a remake of two of her previous telenovelas, Elizabeth and Maite.
In Mi Prima Ciela the elements of a good telenovela worked successfully together:
-A good script. The author adapted and mixed well her two previous scripts. The only weakness I felt was in the way she administered the dramatic knots of her story.
-Protagonists with terrific chemistry and "angel:" Mónica Spears and Manuel Sosa.
-Talented actors in almost all key roles.
-A nice mise-en-scene.
- A story that has worked well ever since Erich Segal wrote in 1970 his Love Story, which made a whole generation cry as they read and watched the film version with Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neal:
Later, other books and other movies have told similar stories. For example: A Walk to Remember (Mandy Moore and Shane West), Sweet November (Charlize Theron and Keanu Reaves), Autumn in New York (Winona Ryder and Richard Gere), Here on Earth (Leelee Sobieski and Chris Klein), among others. In all of them, as in Mi Prima Ciela, the protagonist dies, but love conquers all and leaves lessons for the living.
There are stories that are perfect for telenovelas because they are so emotional. Death as the antagonist is one of them.
4 comments:
The best telenovela ever! I cry everytime I see the last scene..
in cyprus one serie called "for your love" (in greek "gia tin agapi sou")it have the same story like "mi prima ciela" and exactly the same song but in different language in greek
Eutixia, thanks for the tip. That's very interesting to me.
I watched the finale of "mi prima ciela" 2 weeks ago and I still can't get over it. I keep watching some of the most moving scenes of the series again and again and I keep weeping...although I had watched all those movies that have a similar plot (like "love story" and "a walk to remember") this one affected me deeply. I guess one of the reasons was how well written and well interpreted the main characters were (especially David).
By pure coincidence, and thankfully after having finished watching the series, I discovered its Cypriot remake. I say "thankfully" because it would have spoiled everything if I had watched that version first: the actor playing the part of David in the Greek version is horrible, the whole series looks like a poorly prepared school play - especially when compared to the original- not to mention that the translation is generally unsuccessful (imagine that the closest they could find to "mi Vido" and "mi Ciela" was "my prince" "my princess", which of course, has nothing to do with the sweet word-play involved in the original names). And of course, the forced attempt to transfer the original script into the (Cypriot)Greek reality falls into the lines of the ridiculus - imagine aunt Esperanza as a greek-orthodox nun...LAME! The Cypriot remake is a cheap and badly made production, which pays little respect to the original.
anyway...going back to MPC, I have to say: the story was super-romantic and super-moving but I really hated the character of Graciela in the final episodes for her stupid decisions. That story made me so sad that I don't want to watch any similar stories ever again! :(
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