Belíssima
Synopsis
The telenovela tells the story of the family of Júlia Assumpção (Glória Pires), owner of luxury designer lingerie Belíssima in São Paulo.
Created by Stella Assumpção, a famous and internationally known model in the 1960’s, Belíssima started as a unpretentious lingerie shop in São Paulo to become a worldwide reference in the underwear industry thanks to the mythic beauty of its founder and the support of her husband. However, due to a fatality, the life and success of the couple are interrupted. They die prematurely in an airplane accident, leaving their children Pedro (Henri Castelli) and Júlia (Glória Pires) still young in the care of their maternal grandmother, Bia Falcão (Fernanda Montenegro).
The tragedy leaves many open wounds in the family. Bia, who had always been bossy and selfish, is even more bitter after the loss of her beloved and worshiped daughter. Júlia, who was celebrating her birthday on the day her parents died and was on the plane herself is still haunted by nightmares with images from the accident. Pedro has not met his parents, for he survived the accident still in his mother’s womb. Bia raised her two grandchildren with the utmost care and love, wishing them all the best. However, she never knew how to balance her will to control Júlia and Pedro. This ended up causing them to drift apart and leading to constant conflicts with her granddaughter.
Smothered by her grandmother, Júlia has dedicated all her life to professional success. Although she has a promising career, she feels pressured by her mother’s beauty myth and tries to free herself from her shadow. Diffident, she needs a lot of help to fight her fears and allow herself to live a great love.
Despite all adversities, Júlia remains next to her grandmother, with whom she shares the house and the control of the Assumpção group, which, in addition to Belíssima, owns a modern health club called Physical.
Although she stands out in the professional world, Júlia is always tormented by the pressure of not being a charming, shrewd and a desired woman like her mother. Her grandmother Bia (Fernanda Montenegro) is her main oppressor, because she cannot come to terms with having lost her beautiful daughter and inherited a granddaughter that is far from resembling her mother’s elegance and charisma at all.
However, Júlia has a daughter who is everything that Bia wanted her to be: Érica (Letícia Birkheuer). The young girl has Stella’s style and beauty, which intensifies even more the pressures. At home, Júlia can only rely on her faithful protector and confidant uncle Gigi (Pedro Paulo Rangel), who always takes her side in the fights with Bia. In order to make the relationship between both women worse, Júlia falls in love with André (Marcello Anthony), a rustic worker in the plant who, despite his humble background, possesses the beauty she lacks so much. Bia, uncomfortable with her granddaughter’s romance, will do everything to prevent this relationship from developing. She is against their relationship because of their social difference. Through André’s love, Júlia will recover her self-confidence and self-esteem, finding a beautiful woman inside herself.
Pedro (Henri Castelli), Júlia’s brother, on the other hand, has always been a charming and handsome young man, but has never been interested in the family business. He has found the love of his life in Vitória (Claudia Abreu), a girl who used to make a living out of selling candy at the traffic lights in downtown São Paulo. Bia does not care if the young girl is honest and has good character. For her, Vitória will never be worthy of her grandson’s love due to their social difference. Pedro will watch his grandmother’s prejudice turn into hate and, in order to prevent it from interfering in their relationship, decides to move to an island in Greece with his wife and his brother-in-law Tadeu (Thiago Martins). On the island, the couple has a beautiful daughter, Sabina (Marina Ruy Barbosa), and buys a restaurant, in which Pedro is the head cook. His food becomes famous for mixing Greek cuisine with Brazilian spices.
Taís (Maria Flor), also from Brazil, lives on the island as well. Gullible, she had accepted to work as a dancer in Greece and ended up victim to international women trafficking. After she arrived in the country, her agents seized her passport and turned her into a slave and prisoner. Her only friend on the island is a Greek man, Nikos.
A great ally of Taís and of the couple Pedro and Vitória, Nikos Petrakis (Tony Ramos) is a bohemian, a connoisseur of the island’s exciting nightlife and a true friend. The Greek has taken the opportunity of his friendship with the family of Brazilians to learn more about the Portuguese language and its customs. Nikos’ desire to become familiar with Brazilian culture is old, because, in the past, his wife Katina (Irene Ravache) ran away to Brazil with her Turkish lover, Murat (Lima Duarte), while pregnant of his son. The Greek only discovered the whereabouts of his son with the help of Katina’s sister, who, before dying, wrote to him from São Paulo, where his son Cemil (Leopoldo Pacheco) lives with his family. Even without receiving more information, Nikos has never given up his dream of meeting his son and revealing who his true father is.
Nikos’ great love Katina (Irene Ravache) and Murat (Lima Duarte) left Greece to live in Brazil, where they had three children, Cemil (Leopoldo Pacheco), actually Nikos’ son, Safira (Claudia Raia) and Narciso (Vladmir Brichta).
The big house where they live in Campos Elíseos neighborhood is a “Tower of Babel” because in addition to the double ethnicity she inherited, Safira, the couple’s eldest daughter, married four times, with men from different nationalities and had a son from each marriage. With Italian Alberto (Alexandre Borges), with whom she got together twice, she had the beautiful Giovana (Paola Oliveira); with a Portuguese man, she had the diffident Maria João (Bianca Comparato); and from a relationship with a Jewish man, she had Isaac (Vitor Morosini). Currently, Safira is coming out of her fifth marriage, this time with a Japanese man, Takai (Carlos Takeshi), who owns a street vegetable vending business and has two children from his previous relationship, Suzi (Júliana Kametani) and Ernesto (Eduardo Hashimoto).
Alberto, Safira’s ex Italian husband, is the right arm of the president of Belíssima. Excellent professional, he does not enjoy any privilege for being the brother of Ornela (Vera Holtz), Bia Falcão’s best friend. However, Alberto can not contain his lady’s man nature. In addition to losing his wife Safira (Claudia Raia) for the second time, he knocked up cunning Valdete (Leona Cavalli), the maid of the couple at the time, who does everything to extort all the money she can from her former boss. Valdete left her son to be raised by a friend, (Camila Pitanga), who tries to bring the child closer to his father, but the only goal of Casanova Alberto is another lover’s conquest.
To his second son with Safira, Toninho (Thomas Veloso), Alberto does not seem the same caring and devoted father he is to Giovana (Paola Oliveira), the other daughter of the couple. The woman-chaser director has never accepted the paternity of Toninho, but is forced to pay alimony by the court.
Cemil, Safira’s oldest brother, has married once and was abandoned by his wife, who also took their two children, Mateus (Cauã Reymond) and Soraya (Enrica Duncan). Just like his ex brother-in-law, Alberto, he is also interested in Mônica, the maid, but hesitates to make a move when he finds out that the beautiful girl is the sister of his workmate at the factory, André (Marcello Antony).
In love with Júlia, André breaks up the brief romance he had with dangerous Valdente. Unhappy for having been ditched and traded for another one, Valdete promises to destroy André’s romance.
Narciso (Vladimir Brichta), is Katina’s youngest son and likes to enjoy life and the women. He prefers to be a spoiled son than a concerned father.
If it were not for her past, Katina would be a woman in peace with life and fulfilled with her family. However, the guilt she feels for having betrayed her husband and her son, and not having the courage to reveal the truth about Cemil’s paternity, increases every time she receives a letter from Nikos (Tony Ramos). Without knowing that Katina’s sister has passed away, Nikos sends letters to her which end up in Katina’s hand through the intermediation of Tosca (Jussara Freire), owner of the butcher shop. Tosca is the only one who knows the secret of her friend, because she used to live with her sister when she was alive. Although she tries to persuade Katina to tell the truth to her family, Tosca has never revealed the truth to anyone, not even to her son, butcher Fladson (Marcelo Medici). However, no matter how much Katina tries to avoid it, the day that Nikos will arrive to Brazil in search of his son Cemil is getting closer and closer.
What Katina does not know is that her husband also hides from her a mistake from the past. Murat (Lima Duarte) had an affair with powerful Bia Falcão (Fernanda Montenegro), but refused to leave his wife to live with the businesswoman. The only one who knows about this secret is Peppe (Gianfrancesco Guarnieri), old neighbor and friend of the couple, who was in love with Katina but, nevertheless, has never used the information to win her love. Peppe moved to the Italian neighborhood of Bexiga, where he has a theater company and teaches acting to youngsters, including the couple’s grandchildren.
Brute and handsome Pascoal (Reynaldo Gianecchini), owner of a car repair shop, and his weird assistant Jamanta (Cacá Carvalho) live in the same street. The mechanic causes frisson in the neighborhood women of all ages. Pascoal, with his uncouth behavior, does not inspire appreciation in the residents of the street. His main enemy is Murat (Lima Duarte). When the Turkish’s long time companion, his cat, Mustafá, disappears, everyone accuses Pascoal of turning it into a barbecue meal. The reason for the suspicion arises from the fact that the cat’s favorite hiding place was the shop and Pascoal had threatened to get rid of the puss many times.
Another problem in Pascoal’s life is Safira (Claudia Raia), to whom he is deeply attracted. She, however, does everything to kick him out of the neighborhood with the excuse that he is a high risk for the resident’s daughters. Actually, Safira is deeply attracted to the mechanic, but, without knowing how to deal with the situation, se decides to lead a campaign against him. Single, Pascoal always thinks about his great love, sweet Vitória (Claudia Abreu), of whom he has never heard again. Pascoal’s life is turned upside down with the arrival of a certain Rebeca (Carolina Ferraz), who does everything to convince him to become a model for her agency, Razzel Dazzel, and turn him into a sophisticated man to be her mate.
In addition to Pascoal, Rebeca also hires stunning Érica (Letícia Birkeheur), who has come back from a short trip abroad willing to invest in a modeling career;handsome Narciso (Vladimir Brichta), who accepts the challenge because he is more interested in the models than in the profession; and Giovana (Paola Oliveira) who, with the help of her mother and aunt Ornela (Vera Holtz), manages to convince her father, Alberto (Alexandre Borges), to let her follow the modeling career.
The fight among Nikos, Katina and Murat for the love of Cemil will evoke old ethnic hostilities. Through this narrative, the author shows the mixture of races that has formed the population of São Paulo, which combines different cultures and peoples, who end up coming together even if they are opponents or rivals. The old house will serve as stage for many conflicts, romances, intrigues and, especially, a lot of comedy involving its residents and neighbors.
The Belíssima lingerie plant, on the other hand, will serve as backdrop to a lot of intrigue, envy and romance.
Format
Telenovela
180 x 45'
Director
Denise Saraceni
Author
Silvio de Abreu
Photo Gallery - Click to enlarge
Characters
Bia Falcão
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Júlia Assumpção
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André
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Vitória Assumpção
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Pedro Assumpção
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Nikos
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Pascoal
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