AllMovie

The setting for this engaging, well-acted drama is the arid northeastern region of Brazil in the first decade of the 20th century. An engineer named Heitor arrives in the middle of a drought to work on a project for the federal government and he takes an interest in a particular young woman, Matilde. She and her father, Colonel Cesario, live alone and are now quite poor, but that was not always the case. After Heitor decides to employ the Colonel so he will not interfere with Heitor's pursuit of Matilde, circumstances bring them into conflict, and tragedy results.