Anexis Matos

I was talking on the phone with a friend and we decided it might be fun to browse Netflix for soap operas. I found this series and the description grabbed my interest immediately. It also helps that an actress I really like plays the leading role.

Synopsis

In a hostage situation, Rebeca meets a woman who looks exactly like her. She begins investigating and finds another woman who also looks like her. As she investigates, strange things begin to happen.

Series Information

Genre: Drama
Category: Adult
Explicit violence: Some
Explicit sex: Yes
Content warnings I noticed: None

Review

The writing is very good. The story is told in a way that makes sense. It has good pacing, so events are built up to very well. It’s easy to follow.

I watched this series in Spanish. I thought this would be a problem for me. As I said before, I have issues with Spanish comprehension. I understand it enough that it usually isn’t a problem for me when I watch something in my native tongue, but I don’t watch a lot of content in Spanish, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to fully understand the entirety of the story.

I got the important details. The small details definitely flew over my head, but I got the story. A plus for me.

There’s a lot more drama than themes here. It makes sense since it follows the soap opera format. However, unlike in many soap operas I’ve watched, things aren’t added for shock value. I appreciate that a lot.

The characters are very layered. They have their own lives outside of the main story. I would have loved to see more on Tamara.

Watching this series gave me some serious nostalgia. Around 2008, a soap opera started being released in Telemundo called El Rostro De Analía. It translates to The Face of Analía. Till this day, it’s my favorite soap opera.

The series starts off with Mariana, a woman who seemingly has the perfect life. She’s a ruthless businesswoman. She has a great married life with the perfect husband and a beautiful daughter. This all changes the night of her anniversary party when she discovers her husband Daniel is having an affair with her cousin Sarah.

She storms out of the house and gets into her broken car. In the back seat is a woman, Analía who points a gun at her and forces her to drive fast. Analía was sent to kill Mariana by Ricky Montana, a man who works in organized crime in order to test her loyalty. They’re lovers, but he doesn’t know Analía is an undercover agent with the goal to put him in jail and avenge the love of her life who Montana killed.

Analía has no intention of killing Mariana and, when they’re far enough away, she asks Mariana to slow down. However, in her anger, Mariana doesn’t listen and her car drives off a cliff. Everyone believes Mariana dies in the crash.

A doctor, Armando and his assistant, Roberto find a woman with burned skin. Armando finds a wallet with Analía’s picture and decides to reconstruct her face with experimental cloning. Looking into Analía’s history, he finds out that she’s a drug trafficker, stripper, and is accused of murder.

When the woman wakes up, she has no memory of who she is. Armando gives her a new identity, calling her Ana and doesn’t allow her to leave the house. One day, however, Ana leaves the house and saves a drowning Adriana on the beach. There, she meets Daniel.

Soon, Ana is hired as Adriana’s nanny. Later, Daniel and Ana begin a relationship. It’s discovered that she’s Analía and is identified as Mariana’s killer. She’s sent to jail and Daniel breaks up with her while Adriana still loves her and doesn’t believe what they’ve said about her.

When she’s in jail, those who worked with Analía in her mission connect with her. They explain that she was an undercover agent. It takes her some time, but she agrees to work with them.

Ana begins to live Analía’s double life. In the face and body of a woman she doesn’t remember, she resolves to finish what she began years earlier.

Things get very complicated when a woman appears, claiming to be Analía. This is when we find out that Armando realized that Ana wasn’t Analía. I can’t remember how he found her, but he reconstructed Analía’s face with the experimental cloning as well. However, he kept her imprisoned in one part of his house and became obsessed with her, claiming he loved her.

Ana eventually regains her memories. She finds out she’s Mariana. Earlier in the story, this is revealed to her best friend Isabel and Mauricio, Daniel’s brother. I think everyone decided not to reveal the truth to her because it would be too shocking.

After Mariana recovers from the shock, she plans to get her life back. For now, however, she lives as Ana. For some time, she continues living Analía’s life.

Meanwhile, Analía helps turn things in Mariana’s favor. She even attempts to try to get revenge on Mariana’s behalf.

Everyone eventually finds out Ana is Mariana and she begins to get her life back. Analía gets her revenge and gets her life back on track. Both women still share the same face. The story ends with them getting their lives back. I believe Analía seeks out Roberto to change her face to Mariana’s original one.

The story is a lot longer, but I’ve given you a broad version of it. The story includes a psychotic serial killer, a lot of family drama, and witchcraft. All of this is covered in about 178 episodes.

If you’ve watched Triptych, you know about the experiment that’s revealed in the end. I won’t spoil how it came about, but it reminds me so much of El Rostro De Analía. The theme of living a life where you don’t know who you are is present in both series. I wish I could find El Rostro De Analía in full because Triptych has made me want to rewatch it.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a great story. It ends in a way where there could be a season two, but it doesn’t need one. It’s a perfect ending and I had a great time watching it. I rate it four stars.

Audio Description

This section will focus on a critique of the audio description of the series. For those unaware, audio description is a separate audio track added to visual media that describes visual aspects. It’s mainly intended for blind and visually impaired audiences, but it can be enjoyed by and benefit anyone. It was an interesting experience to listen to it. I’ll explain in a moment, but, before I do, I need to establish something.

This is the third Spanish audio description I’ve critiqued for this blog. As I mentioned earlier in this post, I have issues with Spanish comprehension. If I’m watching something or listening to something in Spanish, I find myself translating it as best as I can into English in my head. While Spanish is my native tongue, it doesn’t feel like it because, while I speak it fluently and understand it, my comprehension is a lot less. I don’t speak Spanish all the time and I consume English media.

Due to my issues of comprehension, I’m still not very comfortable critiquing Spanish audio description. I’m not as nervous typing this up as I was the first time, but I’m not as comfortable as I am critiquing English audio description. I’m going to continue trying, of course, so I’ll get more comfortable as I continue publishing my critiques.

It’s very interesting to experience audio described fiction in Spanish. The first two Spanish audio description critiques I did were for a movie based on real events. Triptych gave me more exposure to Spanish audio description as it was eight episodes. I don’t think it’s enough exposure for me to say whether I fully enjoy Spanish audio description, but it was enough to dip my toes into it.

Review

I don’t feel comfortable critiquing the audio description writing, so I won’t. I understood the language for the descriptions, so that’s a plus for me. I’m pretty sure there were instances where I had issues understanding, but I can’t remember any off the top of my head.

The descriptions are minimal. The minimal style of description is not terrible. The biggest advantage is that it doesn’t overwhelm the viewer. It’s biggest disadvantage, however, is that it lacks detail, such as character and setting descriptions.

The characters are not described. There are no physical features mentioned or anything regarding age. No clothing is described either. That’s very disappointing to me.

While I didn’t feel like I missed anything, I didn’t fully get a picture of everything. Granted, this could be because of my Spanish comprehension, but I don’t think that’s the case this time. In my opinion, it lacks detail. It’s missing something else, too, but, for the first time, I can’t name what that is. I can’t put my finger on it.

This show has explicit sex. The descriptions for sex are fine. They’re mid. They’re about what I expected since audio described sex scenes tend to be boring to me. There is one scene, however, that I would like to highlight.

In one of the episodes, Beca is masturbating. In the scene, the viewer is told that she’s masturbating. I appreciate the frankness of the description here. It shows that she begins masturbating in the beginning of the scene, only to tell you later that she continues to do it.

Compared to English audio description, I find this scene a lot more interesting. Any masturbation descriptions that I’ve seen in English audio description feel very technical. They also feel like they’re skirting around the fact that masturbation is happening. They’re boring to listen to.

The best described scenes are the car chases and action scenes. They’re the most engaging descriptions. For me it has to do with the describer’s performance change, but we’ll talk about that in a moment. The other descriptions don’t feel as engaging to me. A lot of them flew over my head.

The audio describer’s performance is engaging. They have a very neutral voice for most of the audio description. A neutral voice is usually good as it tends not to be distracting. However, I’ve found that, if describers are extremely neutral, they can be forgettable. When they speak, I get pulled out of the story because I’m distracted by the voice.

This said, I did notice something a bit strange in the performance. There are moments where the audio describer’s voice changes. It seems to deepen. It’s very small and, if you’re not listening for it, you might not catch it. I wasn’t listening for this at first. When I heard it the first time, I dismissed it. I thought it was possible that I misheard. However, as the episodes continued, the change became more noticeable. I can’t remember if this change happens in episodes, but, if you’re listening for it, pay close attention to the opening credits.

While the performance is neutral for most of the descriptions, when it comes to car chases and action scenes, the describer’s performance changes. It’s a small change, but one I noticed. The describer adds emotion to the descriptions. It feels kind of like reading an audiobook when the narrator reaches an extremely emotional part of the book. I appreciate the change in performance as it symbolizes the change in tone.

The describer does not interrupt dialogue. They also allow viewers to appreciate music and silence.

Unfortunately, Netflix doesn’t offer audio description in all the languages it offers the series. It currently offers audio description in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. As it doesn’t offer the series audio described in all languages, it still excludes viewers.

Conclusion

Overall, the audio description is good. I enjoyed listening to it. I rate it three stars.