LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: A whimsical shaggy-dog tale of a love
story. It is not much like anything you have seen before.
Light fantasy mixes into a forty-year story of denied love,
vengeance, and even a ghost or two. We rarely see Mexican
films in the art market, but this one is worth seeing.
Rating: +2 (-4 to +4).
Relatively often we see Canadian films in the United States. With the length of the border we share with our neighbor to the south, it is surprising that so few Mexican films ever get seen in this country. With the exception of some low-budget horror and science fiction films, few Mexican movies ever make it north of the border. Many that do come north are popular only to make fun of. Films like THE WRESTLING WOMEN VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY or SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED can hardly represent the best that Mexico has to offer. A reminder of that fact is LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE, a pleasant shaggy-dog romance story told in the genre of magical realism. In magical realism, bizarre fantasy mixes with the everyday and is taken very matter-of-factly.
The story takes place in northern Mexico and southern Texas and centers on Tita (played by Lumi Cavazos), her mother (played by Regina Torne' John), and her two older sisters. Tita grew up in the kitchen as a master cook. The time comes when Tita falls in love with Pedro. But Tita's mother forbids Tita to marry then or ever. Family tradition is that the youngest daughter cares for the mother until the mother's death. This arrangement precludes any personal life for the daughter and reduces the daughter to involuntary servitude. At the insistence of the willful mother, Pedro cannot have Tita, so he settles for Tita's older sister Rosaura. But the marriage is at first only a ruse. Pedro is really using the marriage as an excuse to remain close to Tita. Tita is forced to prepare the wedding feast for Pedro and Rosaura. But the supernatural shows its hand in Tita's cooking. Tita expresses herself in her exquisite cooking only too well. Eat what Tita has prepared and you will feel what Tita was feeling when she made the dish. The misery she feels while making the wedding feast is inexplicably spread to all the guests. But its when Tita cooks a REALLY happy meal that things start to happen. Told against the background of a Mexico in revolution in the first third of this century, this is a story of anger and vengeance, yet it never loses its whimsical feel.
At 144 minutes, LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE may be a bit long to sustain interest through its entire length. Still, the style is refreshingly different from anything the American film industry is turning out. It is directed by sometime-actor Alfonso Arau with a screenplay by Laura Esquival based on her own novel, which combines magical realism and recipes for the dishes around which her story is built. The title, incidentally, refers to an anger as hot as the boiling water used for hot chocolate. I can recommend this one and give it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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