A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.
Cruz has said it's the role of her career, and she may be right: drawing heavily on the Sophia Loren of yore in stylizing her sumptuous beauty, both Loren in Two Women and Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce are Raimunda's indomitable predecessors.