This is not the best movie of Maria Felix, you don't get to see the acting skills that you see in movies like La Generala or Doña Diabla, but i think this movie has the originality that its director meant to give to it, i personally like the original Camelia, but we can not trash this one by comparing it to Garbo-Cukor masterpiece, its a totally different film and in no way is it confusing, maybe when subtitled it gets harder to follow the movie but i as a Spanish speaking viewer did not got confused in any part of the movie and thought its worth seeing.
I recommend people to try to see the most Maria Felix films they can see, then you get to understand her as an actor and her characters as the tough Mexican woman who gain its nickname La Doña when she did her first movie hit Doña Barbara in 1943, in Mexican films from the so called golden century contain actors which usually created one character and that same character would star in all their films, such as Mario Moreno's Cantinflas, it is the same with Maria Felix's Doña, a hard woman which is most interested in money and tends to control men for her own advantage. One of the films of Maria Felix in which she doesn't uses this character is Maclovia in which she stars whit also great Mexican actor Pedro Armendariz under the direction of Emilio Fernandez, i highly recommend this film also.
So, if you are going to get into Mexican films try understanding the culture and never fall in the mistake of comparing Mexican film industry with the American industry, we are different cultures is understandable that our films represent different points of view and are acted, directed and written in the Mexican way.
I recommend people to try to see the most Maria Felix films they can see, then you get to understand her as an actor and her characters as the tough Mexican woman who gain its nickname La Doña when she did her first movie hit Doña Barbara in 1943, in Mexican films from the so called golden century contain actors which usually created one character and that same character would star in all their films, such as Mario Moreno's Cantinflas, it is the same with Maria Felix's Doña, a hard woman which is most interested in money and tends to control men for her own advantage. One of the films of Maria Felix in which she doesn't uses this character is Maclovia in which she stars whit also great Mexican actor Pedro Armendariz under the direction of Emilio Fernandez, i highly recommend this film also.
So, if you are going to get into Mexican films try understanding the culture and never fall in the mistake of comparing Mexican film industry with the American industry, we are different cultures is understandable that our films represent different points of view and are acted, directed and written in the Mexican way.