Caray, Caray!

Aurora: Week 2 by NovelaMaven

I’m really getting into this story of a modern-day Sleeping Beauty trying to re-enter her world after a twenty year absence. Sara Maldonado’s lovely Aurora has just the right mixture of strength and fragility and pain. Eugenio Siller as Martín/Lorenzo and Jorge Luis Pila as the older Lorenzo are doing such a good job that it’s easy to forget the leap of faith required to believe that twenty years could turn the first actor into the second. Well almost. And hey, this week we got to see them dance together!

So here’s what has happened in the past week:

At the Cryonics Facility:

When Dr. Gustavo Ponce de León defrosted Aurora, he acted against the wishes of the Board (junta). Now, suspicious of his increasing secrecy and furtive behavior, they insist that he open Aurora’s (empty!) capsule for their inspection. Dra Elizabeth thinks fast: She moves another congelada, same age, coloring and body-type as Aurora, into Aurora’s capsule. The switcheroo fools the committee. After only a brief look at the ice maiden, they authorize the capsule to be resealed and they apologize to Gustavo for doubting him.

Later, Martín brings his father, Lorenzo, to the clinic to catch a glimpse of la congelada before Gustavo blocks access to her capsule. And Lorenzo recognizes instantly that it’s the wrong congelada!

Gustavo and Elizabeth have to fill the capsule left empty by the faux Aurora. Elizabeth enlists the help of a corrupt hospital employee to find a new congelada candidate. And he does: For an unspecified price, a young Jane Doe on the verge of death is stealthily transferred to the Cryonics facility for Gustavo to work his magic.

In la familia Ponce de León:

Aurora:

This week Beta Aurora gets a new look: Blanca helps her update her wardrobe and hair.

She gets up close and personal with Lorenzo. To put an end to his insistence that he is her father, she says, look, I’ll show you it’s not true:

¡Yo te voy a demostrar que no soy tu hija! And she kisses him in a distinctly unfilial fashion.

She is still weak and easily exhausted. And in the Kiss scene, she develops an alarming new symptom. First, we just see a hand with blood dripping onto it. Then, we see that she has a bloody nose. That night, she snuggles into bed next to Blanca. The following morning, Blanca has trouble waking her. When she sees Aurora’s bloody face and the blood stains on the linens, she is very frightened. Aurora wakes up a moment later and reassures her that nothing bad is happening.

She is uneasy about the Big Lie but still tolerates it. (See more about The Big Lie below.)

When Lorenzo tells her he knows that his Aurora isn’t in the capsule at the Cryonics facility, she tries to convince him that she is; it’s just that for the sake of privacy, she’s in a different capsule there.

Gustavo:

This is not a man given to self-doubt. Gustavo remains unrepentant about his past and present behavior. He thinks Aurora should be grateful to him for saving her life.

Inés:

She recognizes she harmed her daughter in the past by going along with Gustavo. She and Aurora reconcile. (Blanca catches Aurora calling Inés ‘mama’; they explain that Aurora needed a mother and Inés was more like a mother than a grandmother to her.)

She is dependent on pills originally prescribed by Gustavo. Now he criticizes her for using them.

Interestingly, Inés boasts to Gustavo that it was she who poisoned Eduardo. She did it to protect Aurora, she says. But first she tried to convince him by sleeping with him. (Okay, this is the second person taking credit for the murder – the first was Dra Elizabeth. Usually only terrorist cells, rival gangs and psychos confess to murders they haven’t committed. Hmmm. Who’s going to be the next one to confess?)

Blanca:

Blanca, with Aurora’s encouragement, is finding new meaning in her life. She worked briefly at the family advertising agency, but that never really interested her. What she loved was her experience at the School of the Arts. She quit because she didn’t want to compete with the ghost of her sister, ie Alpha Aurora. Aurora persuades her to give it another try: she may well be a better dancer than her sister was!

Unfortunately, Blanca is getting a huge crush of Martín. ¡Ay, eso no puede ser! Because of the Big Lie, she has no way of knowing that Lorenzo is her father and therefore Martín is her half brother.

Roque:

He is the family chauffeur and Aurora’s friend and protector, past and present. He is one of the few people who know the whole truth.

The Big Lie:

Aurora sadly agrees to support the lie about her origins because she feels Blanca is unprepared to hear the truth. She also respects Lorenzo’s marriage to Natalia and doesn’t want to destroy his family.

Gustavo takes the Big Lie to another level when he seeks out Federico Alvarez de Toledo, the rich kid he was pushing on Aurora twenty years ago, to pose as the father of Beta Aurora. The guy is slimy: he has frivoled away his fortune and is now willing to say anything if the price is right. The only thing he brings to the table is creepy-looking facial hair, including a 50’s lothario mustache.

The new twist on the lie: Aurora lived with her father Federico all those years. That’s why los Ponce de León never reported her missing.

In la familia Lobos:

Lorenzo:

He continues his struggle to be a good husband and father but he can’t deny the feelings that have been stirred up by Beta Aurora’s appearance. When he thought she was his daughter, she was off-limits. If she’s not his daughter…

Natalia:

With Beta Aurora’s appearance, all of Natalia’s insecurities have surfaced. She knows that for Lorenzo, Alpha Aurora was el amor de su vida. For her, he has never felt more than cariño. She mistakenly thinks that by telling him that Beta Aurora is not his daughter, she’s inoculating him against her charms.

Natalia has some old guilt surfacing too. After Aurora’s disappearance in 1990, she allowed Lorenzo to believe the story that she (Aurora) had betrayed him with Federico. At the time, Vanesa pressured her to do so by threatening that Natalia’s parents, who worked for Vanesa’s family, would lose their jobs if she told the truth.

She asks her stepson Martín to help her hold on to her man. He recognizes the request is inappropriate but he agrees for reasons of his own. He needs to get Daddy out of the way so he can pitch his own woo. Did I hear somebody say Oedipal?

Nina:

Lorenzo befriended Natalia when she was pregnant with Nina. Lorenzo is the only father Nina has ever known. Natalia is still unwilling to tell Nina the name of her biological father.

Nina mopes around Martín, walks into his bedroom without knocking, and sleeps with him when she feels lonely. Get your minds out of the gutter. Sleeps, as in catches some zzzz’s. Well maybe not totally out of the gutter – poor Nina is smitten with her Adonis-like stepbrother even if he sees her as his little sister and has no romantic interest in her. In fact, he confides to her that he’s in love with Beta Aurora.

Martín:

He’s a renaissance man, our Martín. A scientist, a dancer, a writer of love songs which he sings himself. (Not half bad, actually.) He fell in love with Aurora the first time he saw her in the hospital ward of the Freezer. He recognizes that his father is perilously close to being his rival in love.

He is very curious about everything that happens in the Cryonics facility. In part, his interest is scientific – he wanted to work there before he knew Aurora’s story; in part, it is personal – now he wants to know everything there is to know about La Congelada.

One of the young doctors there seems to be interested in him, although he appears not to notice her. He also seems oblivious to the way Blanca and Nina lose themselves in his eyes when they are with him.

César:

We learn a few more details: He is adopted. He is very tough, very smart and inside prison he bargained for his life by agreeing to help some scary fugitives on the outside. As a condition of his release from jail, he is supposed to enter rehab. But right now he is staying with his family and observing everyone very closely.

Vanesa Miller and Vicki:

Vanesa:

The passage of years has done nothing to sweeten her disposition. She is the same lying, spiteful, jealous perra who invited Lorenzo to Aurora’s birthday party in 1990 just so he could see her with Federico and believe that he had been played for a fool.

She still demands Natalia’s silence and threatens to expose her part in the conspiracy to keep Lorenzo and Aurora apart if she speaks up. And her latest lie: she tells Beta Aurora that it was Natalia who invited Lorenzo to that fateful birthday party.

She goes to see Lorenzo and is stung by his scorn for her. He isn’t impressed by her success as a famous telenovela villain, nor the size of her pompis. But she thinks he’s hotter than ever!

With her husband Eduardo safely on ice, she checks out the contents of his caja fuerte: in addition to muchísimo dinero and the usual documents, she finds something unexpected: a DVD labeled “Aurora”. She is impactada by what she sees on the DVD: Aurora being brought back to life. She writes out a statement of what she has just seen and then places it and the DVD back in her safe.

She tells Federico that she knows he isn’t Beta Aurora’s father.

Vicki:

So far, Vanesa’s daughter seems to be free of her mother’s malice. She is on the periphery of the story, a friend for Blanca to confide in.