Luís Mendes

Jorge, a successful engineer and employee of a ministry and Luísa, a romantic and dreamy girl, star as the typical bourgeois couple of the Lisbon society of the 19th century.

Nineteen-year-old Julio heads to Lisbon from the provinces and gets a job as a shoemaker for his uncle Raul. But when he meets Ilda, a confident young housemaid who becomes a regular shop visitor, his working-class values collide with the bourgeois trappings of modern life.

Trafaria changes his business to Angola, in search of a more profitable occupation, by shaming the pioneers. There he engages in the obscure social and political environment, from which emerge some characteristic figures - administrators, their wives and secretaries, Arabs, police officers, priests and mercenaries...

Nair marries Renato for love, and is unhappy because her husband all the money with his lover, Arlete. Sónia, Nair's friend, is a woman who lives happy with a man out of wedlock. Sónia's example Nair to accept the advances of Jorge, a lawyer who lives separate his wife. During a jealousy fight, Nair kills Renato, and it will be Jorgewho will plead she is not guilty of murder, as she acted in defence, when she was facing her own death...