Natalia

Cast

Starring

Vania Bezerra as Natalia

Salvatore Lumetta as Vincent

Steve Groff as Jeffery

Synopsis

Written by Salvatore Lumetta

Natalia is a beautiful young Brazilian woman trapped in a boring and unhappy marriage. Married at eighteen to a charming and ambitious American named Jeffery, Natalia is overwhelmed at her first taste of real money and the fast life and is filled with fairy tale dreams of excitement and life in America.

Natalia and Jeffery eventually settle down in a large house in a wealthy suburb in New Jersey where they have a son named Tommy. Jeffery, once full of life and passionate about Natalia, his own singing and opera, buries himself in his work, and through blind ambition and a single-minded work ethic, becomes a very wealthy man.

Natalia settles into a life of privilege and leisure and occupies most of her time caring for her ten-year-old son and pampering herself with clothes, jewelry and material excess. Her marriage to Jeffery becomes one of shared discontent and open hostility towards each other. Their interaction is one of dysfunction, expressed in two ways, either through silence and apathy or rage and conflict.

Bored and unfulfilled, Natalia longs for passion and true connection. She begins a torrid love affair with a struggling artist named Vincent, which reignites her passion for life and forces her to confront her true feelings about love, sexuality and the real meaning of success and fulfillment.

Vincent, an artist who lives as a free spirit in the run down beach town of Asbury Park, lives apart from the material successes of society. He paints in oils, and hangs out in diners and jazz clubs. He ignites Natalia’s pent up longings and sexual desires, and in their brief but intense physical and emotional rendezvous, Natalia opens to her deeper and more spiritual longings and begins the search for her truer self.

The story is an intense character study of a woman on the verge of a breakdown who is desperately attempting to find out who she really is and make sense out of what has become a life of lies and unhappiness. Trapped out of guilt for her son and terrified of having to live without the safety net of her husband’s wealth, Natalia is often impetuous and dangerously self destructive in her attempts to break free from the compromised life she has created for herself.

In a series of contrasting scenes between her husband, her son and her lover, Natalia begins to come alive and face to face with the façade and illusion she has accepted as her life. She is forced to confront the repercussions of her actions and inactions on both herself and the men in her life.

Natalia, Vincent and Jeffery are all forced to look at what they have created as their own realities and face the devastating emotional effects Natalia’s ultimate decision will have on all their lives.

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Trailer

Rehearsal Scenes