At Tres Marias, Clara gives birth to a daughter, Blanca, who is Raised with all luxury befitting a legitimate child in the now powerfully conservative Trueba family. Esteban has also fathered an illegitimate child, the son of the peasant worker (Sarita Choudhury) he raped on his estate. This illegitimate son is destined to grow up and terrorize the Trueba family.
Ferula, who has moved to Tres Marias at Clara's insistence, hovers over her distracted sister-in-law, attending to practicalities when Clara and Ferula wrapped up in her psychic powers. Clara and Ferula become the best of friends while Esteban, suspicious of a romantic relationship between the two to them, grows insanely jealous of this competition for his wife's attention.
With a blank gaze in her eyes and a ghostly expression, Meryl Streep, who studied psychics for her role as Clara is a spiritual but uninspired clairvoyant. Glenn Close is slightly more intriguing as Ferula, Esteban's repressed older sister, whose relationships with Clara develops lesbian undertones.
Jeremy Irons as Esteban, the patriarch of the Trueba family, ages from 20 to 70 over the course of the film. His acting improves in the film's second half, as his character grows from that of an impressionable young man in love to a domineering landowner and father.
Meanwhile, Blanca grows to be a young woman (Winona Ryder) and has an affair, with a revolutionary peasant, Pedro (Antonio Banderas), giving birth to an illegitimate child of her own, and infuriating her father, who is not insightful enough to realize that he has done exactly the same thing years earlier.
Suddenly it is the 1960s, and the Truebas are caught up in the country's political struggles. Clara continues to float around the house and exercise her psychic powers. While Blanca supports her revolutionary lover and fights for political change.
Winona Ryder's unpredictable acting is at its worst in "the House of the Spirit." Love scenes between Pedro and Blanca are meaningless; true passion is completely absent in their relationships. Pedro's attempts at fiery speeches intended to stir the peasant workers into revolt are equally uninspired, and we are left to puzzle over this sudden attempt at a political message.
August's films fails to capture the intricacies of Allende's novel. We lose all sense of "The House of the Spirits" as a Latin American epic. The movie was filmed in Denmark and Portugal, the characters speak English with a wide variety of accents. There is never a consensus as to the correct pronunciation of Spanish names and places, which are included (along with a handful of Hispanic actors) as one of the few reminders that "The House of the Spirits" is supposed to occur in Latin America.
With the exception of Banderas, Hispanic actors receive only secondary roles in "The House of the Spirits.' a film which should have provided greater opportunities to Latino actors.
Attempts at creating magical realism on film are abandoned after the opening scenes. August seems scared of losing touch with reality, and does not creates the magic which "Like Water for Chocolate" proved can artfully evoked on the movie screen as well as in literature.
August also ignores the feminist message which comes across so strongly in Allende's work. Powerful relationships, between women are glossed over or ignored. The bonds between generations and the significance of a movement from fantasy to political reality more than 50 year of Latin American history are never fully explored.
"The House of the spirits" leaves viewers unsatisfied. Although working with a treasure of Latin American literatures and an all-star cast, August somehow fails to produces a great work on film. Ultimately August's version of "The House of the Spirits" is only a ghost of Allende's full-bodied masterpieces.