Camila

The film opens in 1827 with Ana Perichon de O'Gorman being brought from a Brazilian convent to house arrest. At this time, Camila is a baby when her grandmother arrives and also rejects her at first. Years later, in 1847, Camila is a Buenos Aires socialite who reads French romance novels and is courted by Ignacio, a wealthy man with whom she is not in love. Her fellow socialites urge her to marry him, but Camila longs to marry for love. Meanwhile, her father Adolfo O'Gorman supports the far-right single-party state led by Caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas, while Camila is horrified by the state terrorism used against opposition. She meets a Jesuit priest Father Ladislao Gutiérrez and develops a crush on him, with whom she conducts a discreet affair before eloping to Corrientes Province. Fr. Ladislao works as a schoolteacher and gains admiration from the village, but remains torn between his love for Camila and his longing for priesthood. With his troubled conscience brought to a crisis, Fr. Ladislao runs to the church and screams at the Eucharist. The commandant warns Camila that he will do nothing until morning, urging her and Fr. Ladislao to flee across the Brazilian border. When Camila finds Fr. Ladislao kneeling in prayer before the altar, she bursts into tears, knowing he has made his peace with God. The next morning, Fr. Ladislao returns to Camila to say goodbye and explain that he must return to Buenos Aires for penance and priestly ministry. Saddened but unremorseful, Camila responds, "I knew what I was doing." To both their horror, the commandant and his men arrest them, and Camila's father demands her death penalty. Despite being forbidden from seeing each other in prison, Camila learns she is carrying Fr. Ladislao's child, and the chaplain lets her drink holy water to baptize it. In a military prison, they are both sentenced to be shot without trial, with Rosas refusing to delay Camila's execution due to her pregnancy.