Copyright (c) Pedro Sena 1994
FILM TITLE: LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE DIRECTOR: ALFONSO ARAU COUNTRY: MEXICO 1993 CINEMATOGRAPHY: Emmanuel Lubezki, Steve Bernstein MUSIC: Leo Brower WRITTEN BY: Laura Ezquivel CAST: Marco Leonardi (Pedro), Lumi Cavazos (Tita), Regina Torme (Mama Elena), Ada Carrasco (Niacha), Mario Ivan Martinez (Dr. John), Claudette Maille, ( Gertrude ), Yareli Arizmendi, Arcelia Ramirez SUPER FEATURES: The story is great.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Some stories are meant for movies, but then again, there are times when I wish some stories remained stories, unless we had a French film director do them. Laura Ezquivel's novel is a treat. It stays with you as a fine dessert, or a fine food, and she knows it so well, and revels in it. In the film version, this gets lost because it can not translate. The twelve recipes for each month get reduced to an occasional side story. In the novel, it is the food that brings about the results, and Tita has learned to make the most of the secrets of the culinary delights. The movie couldn't possibly show us how Tita and her mentor ever decided the reasons why such and such a dish were done for whatever occasion.
This loss reduces the richness of the story into a film that is missing a third dimention, but never the less, it is still good.
Tita, is the last girl born in a family, and as is the tradition, she is destined to be the slave daughter to take care of the mother. This Tita rejects, and because of it, she becomes one of the slaves and reduced to kitchen servant. But her downfall into the kitchen has placed he in the hands of an old maid that really knows her food, and discusses it as the greatest love affair and event on the face of the earth. To the maid, the food is the monumental moment when one can place her mark on the world. Tita learns well, and goes better. Gertrude cooked. Tita has learned to affect changes in people because of her choices.
Sometimes the food is sad.... the whole table has a tremendous cry upon eating such a magnificent dessert. Other times the food is so hot that the older sister has to leave to cool off, which is not enough even after a cold shower. And trot off she does in the hands of a military opposite to what the mother stands for. Tita's revenge is working.
But it doesn't work. Tita is in love with the young man, who loves her, but is forced to marry her older sister, because Tita is marked to take care of the mother. Pedro never really loves the older sister, and as they get older, and the sister gets uglier, the thing between Tita and Pedro never really cools off, and eventually is answered.
Tita has grown, and a good man, an American comes along and he relieves the suffering she has, but he is no match for her desire and love for the one man she has been wanting all her life since that one night. Tita confronts the ghost of the mother one more time, and returns.
Finally free to meet and enjoy Pedro, they finally do. And we will keep it this way for all the viewers.
I, personally, love the writing of Laura Ezquivel, much better than I do the movie version. But I think that much of this problem may have been because I saw a version that was DUBBED and the voices were repetitive, unemotional, and so glaringly bland, that it ruined what looks like a good film. It also appears to have taken away the food part of the whole story, which is as tasty as anything else.... it matches the desires in all the film, but then, that must have not been the reason to make a film, or to distribute it to other nations.
Superb performances, if you can get by the lousy translations and often screwy sub-titles. Read the novel first, and then watch the film without the voices.
But a great novel, nonetheless... see it and read it afterwards.
4 GIBLOONS
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews