I wanted conjugations. The wanted pasiones.

Trina Gratton always liked Spanish soap operas – called telenovelas – and watched them with her mother and grandmother.

“They’re addicting – all the drama, the characters and their backgrounds,” Trina said.

So when at the end of Spanish 2 at the teacher showed “Betty La Fea,” it occurred to Trina that she could propose filming a mini telenovela – all in Spanish – with her classmates to get some extra points.

The 9-minute product was “Las Llamaradas de Nuestras Pasiones” – a toxic and hilarious mixture of love, betrayal and murder acted by Lighthouse Christian Academy students.

If the scripting, acting and editing looks hastily contrived and arranged, that’s because the students didn’t have much time at the end of the semester to get it together. It’s hard to determine whether the students are spoofing the genre or themselves, which adds to the charming drollery of the unpolished short.

Trina is the brains – and the beauty – behind the production. Not only did she pour into the program her zest for soaps. She also poured in her passion for film-making and her natural spunkiness. The fun-loving jokesters and pranksters of Spanish 2 drained their own zaniness into the project.

“I love the crazy stuff, crazy ideas,” said Will Clancy, a senior who played Alejandro, the main love interest. “A regular assignment would have been too easy to get extra credit. I wanted to spike things up.”

Alejandro died at the end. “I’m a little sad to have died, but it was satisfying and fulfilling,” he quipped. Read the rest of the article by clicking: Learn Spanish in Los Angeles private school