Luís hates Christmas. In the hospital where she is a doctor, she always offers herself to work for 24 hours in the emergency room on the 24th and 25th of December. When everything gets ready to be another bitter and solitary Christmas, a homeless is taken to the emergency room apparently with a pneumonia, despite refusing treatment. When Luís intervenes, she ends up recognising his father in the homeless man, with whom she cut relations circa 10 years ago.
At the time Portugal presented a strange spectacle to the rest of Europe. D. Afonso VI, son of the fortunate D. João de Bragança, was in possession of the throne and was an insane imbecile. His wife, daughter of the Duke of Nemours and cousin of Louis XIV, dared hatch a plot to oust her husband from the throne. The king's stupidity justified the queen's bravado. Despite being master of unusual strength and having slept with his wife for a long time, she accused him of being impotent. Marie Françoise had acquired through artfulness what Afonso had lost in anger in the kingdom. She had him imprisoned ( November 1667 ) and quickly obtained a papal bull from Rome to confirm her virginity and bless her marriage to her brother-in-law Pedro. Portugal's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1990.