It's amazing how innocently these affairs get started. Your husband leaves town, and you put on your skimpiest dress and invite your husband's brother (who hates him) over for a perfectly platonic, candlelit dinner. Then, because no one as pretty as you should ever sleep alone, you invite him to spend the night. You make assurances that nothing will happen, right before you get undressed in front of him. Then you innocently ask if he's ever masturbated while thinking about you, and suddenly, you're screwing your brother-in-law. How do these things happen?
That's how it starts out for Zoe (Barbara Mori) in La Mujer de Mi Hermano. She whimpers in self-pity throughout the bloated soap opera, asking her gay pal, "Am I a slut?" Of course, as a clichéd, gay, comic-relief sidekick, he has to be agreeable, when he really should be saying, "No, dear. Sluts cheat with strangers. Jerry Springer guests cheat with their husband's siblings."
Her husband, Ignacio (Christian Meier), is really to blame. He's so cartoonishly frigid he has to wear two pairs of socks to keep warm. Focused primarily on running his business, he keeps his poor wife confined to the Jacuzzi of their multimillion-dollar house with only the servants for company. He refuses to have sex unless it's Saturday, so she really has no choice but to bed his hunky hermano, Gonzalo (Manolo Cardona). Gonzalo's an earthy, brooding painter and a colossal, self-centered prick, who whispers sweet little nothings in her ear, like, "I hate condoms." Together, they have the kind of arty, airbrushed sex you usually find in magazines like Cosmo.
The plot is strictly paint-by-numbers, to the point where you can predict every time the phone will ring and who will be calling. The only surprises come with massive contrivances, where characters eavesdrop on conversations they shouldn't hear, thanks to someone accidentally sitting on a cell phone. When the rivalry between the two siblings is finally explained, it does manage to add a little depth, but it's too little, too late. The characters are still about as likable as the venereal diseases I hope they're trading.
It all leads to Zoe's inevitable pregnancy, which we know is coming the moment she says she can't get pregnant. The miracle will make all parties miserable. Ignacio shoots blanks, so that'll pretty much unearth the affair. And Gonzalo won't want the baby because he's Gonzalo. Zoe, alone, might benefit, because it'll give her something new to whine about.