Gabriela

Gabriela (Sonia Braga) turns up in the small Brazilian coastal town of Ilhéus in 1925, poor and unschooled, and goes to work as the cook for Nacib (Marcello Mastroianni), who runs the local bar. She becomes his mistress and then his wife, in a town where the colonels still decide who gets to be anyone. Bruno Barreto follows her through it, a woman who will not be made smaller to fit the life Nacib offers her.