Manuela Sáenz (2000)

Manuela Saenz (2000) takes place in 1856, and tells the story of a whaler who arrives in Paita, Peru, with Herman Melville on board. He is astonished to learn that the title character of the movie, for eight years the lover of Simon Bolivar, is still alive. The movie then movies into flashback and tells her story and how she got where she is. This Venezuelan production was interesting, in that we had no idea who any of these supposedly well-known people we. Well, except for Melville. In middle-school our English teacher told us to be like Bartleby and  when told by a teacher to do something say, “I prefer not to.” We wish we knew more about these characters, though, for the one played by Beatriz Valdes is naked in a couple of scenes,including a full-frontal when she poses for Goya’s “Naked Maja.”