Synopsis
Maria, a Venezuelan woman returns to Venezuela from France when she learns that her aunt Oriana has died and willed her a crumbling and remote Venezuelan hacienda where Maria spent a short time as a girl just entering puberty. Maria goes to the hacienda, a fine, decaying old house in a tropical jungle at the edge of the sea, to prepare the place for sale; while visiting the house, Maria starts wandering through the halls and rooms and she begin to remember her visit years before. While going through her aunt's papers, she also start to find some clues to her aunt's behaviour. Maria is haunted by flashbacks to her childhood, when she spent several months at the hacienda in the company of only the beautiful and mysterious Oriana and Fidelia, a quarrelsome old retainer who constantly hints at terrible events that are best forgotten. In flashbacks, the film show the young Maria trying to understand the quiet but strange atmosphere that surrounds the place while sorting out why Oriana never leaves the hacienda and what secret may be in Oriana's past. The young Maria, as she learns things, imagines her aunt's youth, cruel father, and first love. After these reveries within reveries, Maria, now a grown woman, eventually makes one more discovery by connecting some issues, finding evidence that someone never seen may also be living in the vicinity. After that, Maria decides not to sell the house.
Read more about this topic: Oriana (film)