When Netflix released Burning Betrayal (Traição Quente) in Portuguese) in 2023, it paid off the gamble. It became one of those films that could not leave the audience’s TVs and minds. It was an elegant sun drenched Brazilian erotic thriller and, as the advertisements pointed out, a masterpiece of combining lust, deceit, and danger into one cohesive work. The film was based on one of Sue Hecker’s best selling novels. The story was familiar but still hypnotizing, a tale of forbidden love and then the passion of the protagonists slowly spiraling into a chaotic and passionate romance. The most alluring aspect of the film was not the eroticism, not even the suspense. It was the emotional and psychological exposure of the main protagonists. It was as if the individuals took their filmic role as an anthropological lens and used it as a vehicle to expose their most personal vulnerabilities to the audience.
For the most Burning Betrayal, and in this case the most glamorous, served as a noteworthy changing of the career for the members of the audience and, in particular, the Brazilian actors Giovanna Lancellotti and Leandro Lima.
The Story That Set Everything on Fire
Burning Betrayal focuses on Babi, a successful financial executive, and how she copes when her life goes downhill after discovering her fiancé is unfaithful. Babi, angry and heartbroken, meets Marco. Marco is a lawyer, and while he is charming, he has a dangerous quality. What starts as Babi and Marco’s affair as an escape soon transforms Marco into an emotional obsessive and becomes deeply intertwined with guilt and manipulation.
Burning Betrayal progresses through the predictable narrative of the thriller genre, exploring fascination and treachery as well as ethical dilemmas. Nevertheless, it remains authentically Brazilian. The luxurious hotels, the candlelit rooms, and the Brazilian coast offer an atmosphere of tension and temptation. The tension of each and every scene is largely dependent on rage and desire and is directed toward the question of control.
Burning Betrayal, more than anything else, is about a woman reestablishing her agency. It is about a woman reclaiming her control after being hurt and reclaiming her pleasure, pain, and destiny. This is what, in conjunction with the courageous performance by Lancellotti, made the film resonate with audiences well beyond its erotic allure.
Giovanna Lancellotti — The Actress Who Reclaimed Herself
For the talented Giovanna Lancellotti, who is already well known in Brazil for her telenovela work in Gabriela and Segundo Sol, Burning Betrayal was not another risk. This Netflix erotic thriller was a risk for Lancellotti. She was stepping outside the comfort of traditional TV dramas and would have to deal with the risk of filming and showing explicit content for a global audience.
In the pre-release time frame, Lancellotti, in her interviews, stated that she had doubts about the audience, mainly the conservative Brazilians, response to the content. Lancellotti was still drawn to Babi’s arc, a woman who learns to reclaim her identity via social defiance.
The emotional scenes were as draining as the physically demanding scenes. “It wasn’t about being sexy,” she said in one behind-the-scenes clip, “it was about showing vulnerability without shame.”
After the release of the performance, something remarkable happened. The image of Lancellotti was no longer confined to the “sweet girl” persona. Instead, she was the portrayal of fearless and emotionally intricate characters. The role was praised for her restraint as Lancellotti did not play Babi as a victim, but a woman undergoing a rediscovery of self.In her off-screen life, though, and like many women in her position, she still dealt with social media backlash, which was poorly overshadowed by the attention her defiance of social norms had generated. Comments on social media focused on her “bravery,” “courage,” and “bad choices,” which she ignored to say, “All that chatter doesn’t count. What I focused on was my story, and it was the truth in my heart.”
This film not only had the primary impact of defocusing her acting on the persona she had created, it had the more lasting effect of changing who she was.
Leandro Lima – The Seducer with Shadows
If Lancellotti’s Babi was all fire, Leandro Lima’s Marco was pure smoke – seductive, elusive, and frustrating in his inability to deliver. Although he had been in Brazilian television (Pantanal, Joia Rara), and was acclaimed and starred in many roles, and had been typecast in roles for television most probably for the esthetic the television had at that time, his film’s challenge for him in Burning Betrayal was precisely in adding a more complex character, Marco, in his script-minus the boring clichés.
Marco is someone who conceals his distress with a self-assured exterior, and a dispassionately analytic gaze. There is no ‘pilot’ who inquires why the machine he operates ‘malfunctions’ the way it does. Many in his interviews have failed to grasp this and have accused him of supporting the dissent.
Lima received the international recognition he had long desired professionally from Burning Betrayal. His captivating performance garnered the attention of international streaming audiences, provoking new proposals from both Brazilian and international productions. Of course, with new contracts, challenges arise, such as the sudden female attention and being typecast as the “Latin lover.”
These challenges, however, Euforem Lima was qickr As he remarked, “I want to be remembered for the truth.”
The Chemistry That Wasn’t Just the Camera
The chemistry between Lancellotti and Lima was, perhaps, one of the propelling factors for the success of Burning Betrayal. Their on-screen intimacy and interactions as a couple felt unforced and, in fact, seemed like a real couple.
Lancellotti and Lima attributed their comfort to open lines of communication and mutual trust. Reportedly, the director, Diego Freitas, made the set safe and respectful, granting the actors autonomy in the filming of the intimate scenes
Nonetheless, those experiences demanded a certain boldness. According to Giovanna, she became quite anxious prior to filming the first love scene, but she found relief through Leandro’s professionalism and humor. Members of the crew stated that the pair’s off-screen friendship greatly contributed to the emotional authenticity portrayed in the film.
The Afterglow — Fame, Judgment, and Redemption
After the premiere of Burning Betrayal, it became one of the most binge-watched non-English films on Netflix and began trending in Brazil, Portugal, and Latin America. Such global reach invited notoriety, which came with discussions around how female desire is presented in films.
The film also garnered international work for Lancellotti, who began receiving invitations to Spanish and Portuguese productions. Her boldness in taking on boundary-pushing roles also earned her greater acknowledgment in the industry. Even so, she, like many in her industry, spoke about the emotional impact of being overtly sexualized online, a juxtaposition many actresses in her genre experience.