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A sullen doctor who is teetering on the cusp of middle-age is forced to revisit his painful family past in director Gerardo Herrero's adaptation of Almudena Grandes' best-selling novel. As children, Juan and Charo (Natalia Sanchez) were sweethearts until Charo was swept away by the charms of Juan's older brother Dami. Though Dami and Charo eventually marry, their union was simply not meant to be. Soon after the unhappy wife comes seeking solace in the arms of her husband's brother, tragedy strikes and Charo is killed in a deadly car accident. Years later, Juan is a forty-year old doctor who has relocated his family from Madrid to the village of Cádiz on Spain's Atlantic coast. In addition to caring for he and Dami's mentally handicapped younger brother Alfonso (Andres Gertrudix), Juan also acts as guardian to his young niece Tamara. When a relationship begins to develop between Juan and his Andalusian maid Maribel (Cuca Escribano), Juan's troubled past soon begins to work its way to the surface of things despite his best efforts to keep it under lock and key.