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 It
is some weeks before the wedding of her elder son Cruz with the wealthy
heiress Eden Capwell that Carmen Castillo makes her entrance in Santa Barbara. Proud of
her Mexican origins, Carmen shows herself very possessive to her son,
directive but protective, without realizing that this latter grew and
that he is in age at the moment to decide himself how to manage hits
life.
The
first contacts with Eden are very cold : Carmen does not understand why
her beloved son is crazy of a fair and rich Californian girl, while she
raised him in the respect of the Mexican traditions, to favour modesty
and simplicity. At first, she even meets C.C. Cawpell (whom she besides
already knows) to try to prevent this union. Carmen will need time to
understand that Cruz does not deny his education and his background by
marrying Eden and to finally learn to love her future daughter-in-law.
But the wedding ceremony, interrupted by a fire at the Orient Express
restaurant, does not finally occur and Carmen eventually comes back to
her home.
It
is in 1988 that she does her come-back, again on the eve of the
announcement of a new ceremony to unite Cruz and Eden. A lot of water
has passed under the bridges and, this time, Carmen totally accepts
Eden. But her directive character did not leave her and she tries to
impose on the young couple as well the place of their wedding as the
dress that Eden has to wear, always in an idea of respect for her family
tradition. But Carmen has rarely the upper hand on Cruz, and recognizes
more easily by a smile her fault of wanting to govern everything.
Accommodated to the hotel or to Eden and Cruz's beach house, Carmen
continues to make brief appearances in the life of her son, from his
wedding to, later, the reunion with Adriana, her granddaughter.
If
she never complained about her only daughter, named Carmen too, Carmen
has however more brushes with her younger son, Ric. Already in 1988, she
complains about his fiery and irresponsible behavior to Cruz, after he
made her lose the family house. In 1989, when Ric makes his arrival in
Santa Barbara after the death of his wife in Paris, Carmen tries to
catch up what she may have missed of his education. But nothing changes,
Ric is very too different from Cruz, and Carmen lives with it. The same
year, Carmen also faces the return of her husband Rafael, who had left
her to live on his magician's talents in Acapulco. Carmen shows herself
often exceeded by the absurd character of her husband, in spite of Cruz's
attempts to retie the loving links between his two parents.
Behind
a frank and natural facade, Carmen keeps however in her a secret which
she is obliged to reveal the next year. The return in town of the
businessman Harland Richard puts Carmen in front of an error from her
past : an adventure she had with this man while she was married to
Rafael. Of this affair was born a child, Ric. When Ric learns the truth
on his filiation, he is destroyed and is obliged to break his love
relation with Tawny, Harland's daughter, who so turns out to be his
half-sister. Already saddened to have hidden the truth to her son,
Carmen suddenly faces her imperfection, her right to make mistakes which
she refused until then to admit. A way to make the character less
unidimensional and more subject to storylines...
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