Desperate Lies
By Melissa Camacho,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Mature Brazilian drama has violence, sex, drugs, cursing.
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Desperate Lies
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What's the Story?
DESPERATE LIES (aka Pedaço de Mim in Portuguese) is a Brazilian soap opera about a woman who gives birth to twins with two different fathers. It's 2008, and in Rio de Janeiro Liana (Juliana Paes) is desperate to have a baby and doing everything she can to get pregnant. But when she finds out that her husband Tomás (Vladimir Brichta) has been cheating on her with Claudia (Yohama Eshima), a woman from their former outdoor cycling club, she's devastated. The next day Liana's longtime family friend Débora (Martha Nowill) convinces her to have a night out at a club where her brother Oscar (Felipe Abib) works. Things get out of hand, and the next day Liana realizes that Oscar violated her while she was unconscious. As she tries to come to terms with what happened, Tomás, who went on a last-minute cycling trip, has an accident and ends up in the hospital. The couple soon reconciles, and Liana soon learns that she's pregnant with twins, and that one of them is Oscar's biological son thanks to a rare phenomenon known as heteropaternal superfecundation. What follows is a narrative that unfolds over 18 years that reveals the impact this discovery has on Liana, the twins, and those closest to them.
Is It Any Good?
The Brazilian soap opera, the title of which directly translates into "piece of me" in English, contains mature themes and unexpected dramatic twists involving infidelity, sex, and violence. Like most Brazilian soaps (known locally as "novelas"), Desperate Lies also deal with controversial subjects in more realistic ways than the average Latin or South American-produced fictional serial drama. Viewers unfamiliar with Brazilian melodramas might be taken back by the plot lines developed to broach these subjects, especially given that the overall premise of the series centers around rape. But for those who are able to get past this, and who like emotion-driven stories, this one will be entertaining.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about heteropaternal superfecundation. How does it happen and why? Does this series offer a realistic explanation of what it is?
What are the differences between soap operas produced in the U.S. and Brazilian novelas like Desperate Lies? How different are novelas from traditional telenovelas?
TV Details
- Premiere date: July 5, 2024
- Cast: Juliana Paes , Vladimir Brichta , Yohama Eshima , Felipe Abib
- Network: Netflix
- Genre: Drama
- TV rating: TV-MA
- Last updated: July 10, 2024
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