João Mário Grilo is a Portuguese director, screenwriter, film scholar and film teacher. He was nominated for the Golden Lion in the Venice Film Festival with his 1982 film "A Estrangeira".
Joana, 40 years old medical phychiatric, is married to Paul, an executive of a large financial company. Paul hopes that Joana fulfils her role and follows his constant social influences demonstrations. But the marriage is profoundly altered when Mónica, a young model, enters Joana´s life. Irresistibly attracted, they involved romantically, in a world of liberating experiences and feelings. But this will be a short trip, since the revelation of this affair forces Paulo to take drastic measures... ~ FICA
At the time Portugal presented a strange spectacle to the rest of Europe. D. Afonso VI, son of the fortunate D. João de Bragança, was in possession of the throne and was an insane imbecile. His wife, daughter of the Duke of Nemours and cousin of Louis XIV, dared hatch a plot to oust her husband from the throne. The king's stupidity justified the queen's bravado. Despite being master of unusual strength and having slept with his wife for a long time, she accused him of being impotent. Marie Françoise had acquired through artfulness what Afonso had lost in anger in the kingdom. She had him imprisoned ( November 1667 ) and quickly obtained a papal bull from Rome to confirm her virginity and bless her marriage to her brother-in-law Pedro. Portugal's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1990.
In order to make some much-needed cash for himself, 65-year-old Portuguese prison inmate Eugenio impersonates a young woman and begins a romantic correspondence with a lonely Portuguese truck-driver living in Boston, convincing him that her tragic life has culminated in financial dire straits so he will send money. At first Eugenio's sister Idalina assists him in creating the character of Maria da Luz. Touched by her sweetness and apparent loving nature, the trucker willingly sends her money. When Idalina starts fearing they will be caught, she backs out of her arrangement with Eugenio who then convinces his young cellmate Vasco to help write the letters and even sends a picture of himself at age seven to "prove" that Maria has a young son. As prison life exacts an increasingly heavy toll upon Eugenio's health, his feminine alter-ego helps sustain him.
