Una Mujer Sin Amor on AllMovie

A comparatively conventional Luis Bunuel effort, the Mexican Woman Without Love is based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant. Rosario Granados plays a young wife, Rosario Montero. Ignored by her wealthy art dealer husband, Don Carlos (Julio Villarreal) -- who is many years her senior -- Rosario enters into an affair with an engineer, Julio Mistral (Tito Junco), by whom she becomes pregnant. Immediately after Rosario conceives, Don Carlos grows seriously ill, and Rosario is thus forced to abandon the affair and take care of him; she passes off her newborn as her husband's child. Two decades pass; Julio dies, leaving his fortune to Don Carlos. This stirs up all kinds of trouble, including suspicions among the now-grown Montero children of their mother's onetime infidelity, and consequent feelings of filial bitterness and hostility. The strains are too great for everyone to bear and the family slowly unravels. The anti-clerical strain in Woman Without Love is not as pronounced as the anti-establishment theme, but it's there for those familiar with Bunuel's "code words" and imagery.