Plot
Luisa, a middle class housewife living in Santander, Northern Spain, has a comfortable existence with her husband Ramiro, who has a successful medico-dental career. They have two children: Ramirín and Ángela. One winter day, Luisa, stopping in a traffic light, spots her ex-husband, Ángel, who is selling tissues on the streets. After that brief encounter, the next day, Luisa looks for Ángel in the area where she saw him before. She finds him wandering about the city in destitution. Overcome with sentimentality and, over Ramiro's objections, Luisa takes Ángel into her home in an effort to help him and rebuild the friendship the three of them once had. Luisa is convinced that destiny has reunited them.
Luisa, Ángel and Ramiro were three inseparable friends in their childhood and youth. Once they became adults, they formed an uneasy love triangle in which the two men were rivals for Luisa's affection. Luisa married Ángel, but two years later, she left him to marry Ramiro, who she thought was the one she was mean to be with.
Ramiro is not pleased to see again his former friend who by now he wishfully presumed to be dead. Unwillingly, he accepts Ángel's presence. He thought Ángel was working in construction living a prosperous life in South America. However, after his divorce from Luisa's, Ángel spent all his money in a restless life. He reappears after more than ten years of absence, broke and ill.
Ángel still loves Luisa and has never overcome his feelings of resentment about their divorce. He still wears the ring she gave him in their first and only wedding anniversary. The ring has the inscription: P.R.E.O.M. that stands for: To be reunited in the other world (Spanish: para reencontrarse en el otro mundo).
Initially overwhelmed by Luisa's mystical and deranged streak, Ángel tries to leave but Ángela brings him back home. He has fits, foaming, and blood in the mouth. Medical results show that he is terminally ill. Soon, Ramiro and Ángel shift from friends to enemies and have a bitter confrontation. Luisa is torn between them. She loves Ángel as a part of herself, but also loves her husband and beyond reason, wants to have them both.
Ángel establishes a friendship with the couple's little children, Ramirin and Ángela. The girl is more sympathetic and the boy, always taking his father side, is a little hostile. Ángel spellbinds them both with his offbeat stories and his directness. He takes them to a short trip to the beach where he reenacts with them a scene from his own childhood. He sees in the children the reflection of his own youth and his erstwhile friendship with Luisa and Ramiro. While Ángel is at the beach, Ramiro and Luisa find out that Ángel is terminally ill and has very little time to live. Ramiro hopes he can wait out Ángel's declining health, while Luisa does not accept the medical verdict. As Ángel's health worsens, Luisa insists upon caring for him in the house rather than sending him off to a hospital. He is soon bedridden and in constant pain. Luisa makes love to him, and when she returns to Ramiro in their bedroom, she has sex with her husband. She loves them both intensely and equally.
When Ángel condition worsens, he falls in to coma, Luisa, alone through force of will brings him back to life to the astonishment of her husband and children. She takes Ángel to bed, and in spite of his illness makes love to him. She does not deceive her husband, she tells him so right after. Ramiro takes the information with resignation knowing that the end is near for his rival. When Ángel is at death's door, Ramiro prepares a lethal doze of anesthetic to accelerate his death. In the final moment, the dying man makes a final, desperate bid to steal his ex-wife away from her new spouse. He grasps the hypodermic needle with its overdose of anesthetic and kills Ramiro. Dragging himself to his rival's marital bed, Ángel dies next to Luisa. Luisa then takes a ring with P.R.E.O.M. written on the inside from her dresser and puts it on the now dead Ramiro, to bring the two ex-friends and rivals together in the after life. Luisa and the children follow two funeral cars to the cemetery, both coffins have written: to be reunited in the other world.
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