''Presença de Anita" is one of my favorite series of all and I can say that until now,it is my favorite of the Brazilian ones. It has many things in common with 'Lolita', but the main character Anita is 18 years old instead of 12. Mel Lisboa showed a great work as Anita,since it was her first work as an actress and she was just 19 years old.Fernando is a married guy in his 40's. He wants to write a book,but he is not having any inspiration at all. One day, he, his wife Lucia Helena and his kids Luiza and Zezinho, travels to a country town where Lucia was raised to spend some time. There, Fernando meets the beautiful and seductive Anita, a 18 year-old girl who had many experiences for her age, and is in the same time girl and woman. Fernando starts to find his inspiration on her as well as a torrid relationship.(And Anita has the same age as his daughter!) But many things starts to get complicated and not everything is going to end up well.

This is not a typical Brazilian love story, and i would not call it a soap because, but mini-series instead, because it has an incisive plot with no space for "dont matter scenes". This is a love story between a 15 year girl and a 40 year man. At first u may think its a very seen idea, but this series really make u stay in front of your television screen from start to the end. It starts when a 15 years girl, Anita (Mel Lisboa), goes to a small town and starts living in a house where a lover killed her lover, meets a 40 years old writer, Nando(José Mayer) that is in a no inspiration period and they fall in a strange kind of love because Anita thinks its fate placing the 2 dead lovers together again. In this series making love scenes are very real, and it scared and impressed me the realism that Mel Lisboa gave to her character making the role story very believable even if it had an occult and mystical side. Still its a very controversial story, in many ways looks like Adryan Lyne movie Lolita but due to be a mini-series, every detail of characters story is very well explained leaving you no questions about their background. I hope this will pass on rest of Europe and America because its more a love story than a pervert film and Mel Lisboa and José mayer performances deserve to be seen.

PRESENÇA DE ANITA (ANITA'S PRESENCE) was the great mouth-to-mouth subject during its 16 episodes, mostly because of the spicy sex scenes between a middle-aged man and a teenager. The plot is obviously an influence of Nabokov's LOLITA (though it's based on a novel) and the soap opera atmosphere is always there, but this mini series was a high above the average production for Rede Globo's level. The actors are great (Mel Lisboa, 19, in her acting debut, was incredibly sexy and diabolical), the sex scenes were realistic and the whole thematic of destiny, obsession and tragedy gave a great mystery/ mystical tone that kept our attention from start to finish. It was somewhat slow and with some dumb subplots in the start, but the last episode was excellent, really eye-opening. The last scene, Anita's last line and the music theme will stay in my mind for a long time. If it ever sees the daylight in the US, Europe or anywhere out of Brazil, I recommend you to watch it.