Arrancame la Vida on AllMovie

A husband with sweeping political ambitions and his outwardly docile wife ultimately use one another as means to an end in this lavish, epic period drama from Mexico, that unfurls in 1930s and '40s Mexico, just after the Mexican Revolution. Though Catalina Guzman (Ana Claudia Talacon) was born into a rural family that suffers from abject poverty, she sees a way out via a long-term relationship with the conniving, calculating general Andres Asensio (Daniel Gimenez Cacho). Asensio's aspirations extend far beyond the confines of the military: he ultimately plans to work his way up to the Mexican presidency. In need of a wife (in part to make his own personal life complete and paint an excellent picture for the public), he beds Catalina before she reaches her 16th birthday, and marries her soon after. Dark clouds soon appear on the horizon in the form of scandals from Asensio's personal life, including time spent in jail for murder and the revelation that he's a philanderer who has fathered children by multiple women, but this doesn't seem to phase Catalina. She seems completely unfazed by all of this, but as it turns out, Catalina has a few agendas of her own.