Chocolate com Pimenta

Plot synopsis:
The story of Ana Francisca, Mariana Ximenes, who begins the soap opera as a young and poor teenager. She is lovingly known by those close to her as Aninha. Her father is killed, and she must flee to the city of Compton. There she lives with her uncle Margarido (Osmar Prado), grand aunt Carmem (Laura Cardoso), and cousin Márcia (Drica Moraes), along with two more adopted family members, Timóteo (Marcelo Novaes) and Dália (Carla Daniel) on their small farm. She is instantly unpopular at school because she is poor and is hated by Olga. She begins to have a connection with Danilo (Murilo Benício) but is kept from him by Olga who also loves him.
She begins to work at the city's chocolate factory. The factory is a very important part of the city because it raises the price of land, brings in money, and give the city social status. Ana meets a very sick man while working there. She believes that he is just a worker at the factory and befriends him while helping to bring him back to health.
After a while the connection between Danilo and Ana becomes clear and they make love in his car at an overlook. Shortly afterward Ana becomes pregnant with his child and tells his aunt. The aunt secretly hates Ana for her low social status and pretends to be happy for her. She promises to tell Danilo about the news so that Ana can have time to tell her family before the big party that is to be held the next day. Instead she keeps it from him and helps Olga plan against Ana. At the party they dunk a bucket of green paint on Ana's head and everyone laughs at her.
After being humiliated at party she runs away and bumps into her friend (now recovered from the illness) and later finds out that he is in fact the owner of the factory. Deeply touched by Ana's selflessness in helping him without any interest in his money he offers to marry her so that she can avoid the shame of having a son out of wedlock. Though Ana is suspicious at first, he promises that he does it out of friendship and would never touch her, she agrees. Over the course of seven years she is trained to be a proper lady and gives birth to her son, Tonito. Later, her husband dies from old age and she is left with all the inheritance. The rest of the story happens between the population of the city of Ventura, where a group of 4 people want to take Ana Francisca out of the factory command and make all kinds of plans to take it off from her.
The majority of this novela is spent with the characters struggling with misunderstanding and assumptions. This puts friendships, relationships and family bonds to test. Near the end all the truth comes to light, and each person is able to find their true happy ending.

Tags: romantic

Review:
lubbed it. I was captivated by this soap. ADDICTED. it really was amazing, although mariana ximenes(as much as i love her) tired out the 'felizes' and the heartbroken role. I don't know how many times i cried over the Guillherme/Celina/Graca story..... Magic. this is the soap opera that made me fall in love with brazillian soaps... very good. and a nice happy ending.. although a very tearful ending... and I'm not THAT emotional.... very good piece of work... downfall however was some of the special effects... such as 'Aninha' seeing ludovic.... the echo on his voice made it almost impossible for me, a non-brazillian speaking person, to understand. and also, the rays of light were almost too cheesy... The superb Walcyr Carrasco 'strikes' again. A very short time after 'A Padroeira', the excellent author Walcyr Carrasco delights us with his new and tasty (yeah, the word is that, tasty!) work. Now, day by day, at six o'clock, we Brazilians sit on the sofa and spend moments of pure joy and comedy. And that time, Walcyr Carrasco presents us a plot which seems to be the opposite of the most soap opera plots: the villains in the soap 'conspire' to join the passionate couple, instead of separating them. This is the very new of that story. Mariana Ximenes never acted in a role so serious and adult like this is. She's perfect! And not only Mariana Ximenes, but the whole cast of theater superstars is marvelous, wonderful, perfect, SUPERB!