"Like Water for Chocolate"
                           A Review by
                      Linda Lopez McAlister
                         April 17, 1993

   I usually don't review a film unless it's playing in the area or
available on video so listeners can run right out and see it if
they want to.  I'm going to make an exception to that today because
there's nothing playing this week in Tampa that I wanted to review
and, last week while I was visiting Minneapolis, I saw a film I
love so much I can't wait to tell you about it.  Tuck this one away
in your memory for future reference--it will get to Tampa
eventually and when it does, it's one you have to see.  It's called
"Like Water for Chocolate"--an unusual title and an unusual film,
to say the least.

    This is a Mexican film, directed by Alfonso Arau, with a
screenplay by Laura Esquival based on her best-selling Mexican
novel "Como Agua para Chocolate."  The title refers to the Mexican
way of making hot chocolate where the water is repeatedly brought
just to the boiling point where it thickens and seethes and becomes
agitated as more and more chocolate is added.  And it's a perfect
title for this magical comedy about seething passions and sensual
delights, both sexual and gustatory.

    The film is framed by a contemporary Mexican woman telling us
how much she cries when she chops onions and then launching into
the story of her great aunt Tita who was born around the turn of
the century and who lived on her family's ranch on the Mexican-
Texas border area during the Mexican Revolution.  Tita was born on
the kitchen table where the cook had been chopping onions; during
the birth her mother cried such a volume of tears that the next day
when the deluge dried there was enough salt remaining to fill a
gunny sack.  That's only the beginning of the fairy-tale-like magic
hyperbole around food that makes this such a delightful film.  Tita
is the youngest daughter of a stern widow who believes that, as the
youngest, it's Tita's responsibility not to marry but to stay at
home and take care of her mother.  Tita (played by Lumi Cavosos)
falls in love with handsome Pedro (Marco Leonardi), but her mother
absolutely refuses to grant permission for them to marry.  She
suggests instead that Pedro marry her eldest daughter Rosaura
(Yareli Arizmendi), and, in order to be in close proximity to Tita
he agrees.

    Tita's great gift (she was, after all, born on a kitchen table)
is her culinary talent so she is put in charge of the cooking of
the wedding feast.  As she stirs the batter for the wedding cake
the night before the wedding her tears fall into the batter, and we
know we're in a magical place because, the next day, when the wedding
guests dig in to the cake, each one of them is overcome by sadness
and bursts into tears.  This magical ability of Tita's to infuse
her feelings into food and pass them along to others reaches its
height when her now brother-in-law Pedro brings her a lover's
boquet of roses on the pretext that she has been the family cook
for a year.  She presses it to her breast and the thorns draw
blood, some of which finds its way into the quail with rose petal
sauce she's making for lunch.  The ensuing sequence showing
everyone at the lunch table being overcome with paroxysms of
unspoken sexual desire is one of the funniest I've seen in years.
The middle daughter, Gertrudis, gets so hot she runs out to take a
cold shower and sets the wooden shower shack on fire with her body
heat.  One of Pancho Villa's soldiers in the area, attracted by the
passionate aroma of rose petals, sweeps her naked from the fire and
rides off with her; when we see her again years later she's a
general in Pancho Villa's Revolutionary Army.

   This should give you a little taste of the sensuous magic that
leavens this delightful family saga covering several decades on
both sides of the border.  I won't tell you how it ends but, like
the rest of this cinematic feast, the final course of "Like Water
for Chocolate" is spectacular--a filmic flambed dessert.  I loved
this delectable cinematic treat and I'm sure you will too.  But
you'd better buy popcorn.  The food in this film is so gorgeous and
all-pervasive you'll be salivating the whole time.

   For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on women
and film.