Teresa, a young woman who is poor and lives at a shanty town, starts working as a cook at an upper-class residence. She suffers sexual harassment from the owner of the house; his son Ricardo also makes advances towards her, although he has an informal engagement to another woman. Teresa is rehearsing to be the standard bearer for the Samba School (Escola de Samba) of her community, but as she begins mingling with her bosses and their milieu, she gradually begins to disconnect from her former social environment. Ricardo starts courting her seriously, and then she has to choose between him and her other suitor from her community.
The cinematography on this is quite impressive, which makes the viewing experience relatively painless. The film is poor, even for Brazilian comedy standards of that era. The supreme aberration one has to withstand is the casting of European-descended and middle-class-mannered Eliana as a very poor woman living in a miserable neighborhood who performs at a Samba School and gives lessons on macumba to the lady of the house at which she works. The dramatic axis of the movie is a trivial examination of social rising, which here is based on looks and also on wits. The film's title bears no relation to the plot, and is only made less absurd by an equally out-of-the-blue musical number with motifs from the then newly inaugurated Brazilian capital.
Rating: 31
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