Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.
In the spring of 1993, director Alfonso Arau’s film Like Water For Chocolate (Como Agua Para Chocolate) was all the rage, not only in Mexico where it was produced, but throughout the United States as well. It became the highest grossing foreign film ever in the U.S. as of that time. It is a Mexican adult fairy tale that deals with such issues as romance, passion, obsession, revenge, and most especially, culinary magic. Like Water For Chocolate belongs to the tradition of magical realism that has been a strong force in Latin American literature and film for some time. The net result is a film that is both enchanting and steamy in an artistic sort of way.
The name of the film comes from the method of preparing hot chocolate in Mexico. The water is brought to an agitated boil before the chocolate is added. The phrase “like water for chocolate” therefore refers to a person in an agitated state of passionate arousal. An equivalent English slang colloquialism would be “having the hots” for a particular person. This is a film about overheated libidos. The film was based on a novel by Laura Esquivel, who is the wife of the director of the film, Alfonso Arau.
The Premise of the Story: The story takes place around 1910 on a ranch situated in a Mexican border town. The story is poetically narrated by Esperanza (Arcelia Ramirex), the niece of the heroine. It is told as a kind of reminiscence. The heroine is Tita (Lumi Cavazos), the youngest of three sisters in a family dominated by a widowed mother. As young as Tita is, one aspect of her fate is already sealed by an inviolable family tradition that holds that the youngest daughter in each generation must remain unmarried and care for her parents until both have passed away. Tita is quiet and shy, and easily dominated by her overbearing and cruel mother, Mama Elena (Regina Torne). Mama is fearsome, selfish, and repressive – the unsavory villain in this fairytale.
Tita finds joy, however, in the kitchen, where she thrives under the tutelage of the family’s Indian cook, Nacha (Ada Carrasco). Nacha is not only a masterful cook in the usual sense, but possesses magical powers of culinary alchemy passed down to her via her native heritage. Nacha teaches Tita how to impart her feelings to the food she prepares, giving the foods the mystical capacity to influence the emotions and even the physical condition of those that partake.
Tita is reconciled to her fate until she meets a handsome neighboring rancher named Pedro (Marco Leonardi). They fall madly and mutually in love and Pedro is emboldened to ask Mama Elena for Tita’s hand. Mama Elena flatly refuses, explaining that Tita must remain unmarried by family tradition. No amount of pleading will soften her position. Mama Elena, however, offers Pedro the alternative of her eldest daughter, Rosura (Yareli Arizmendi). In comparison to Tita, Rosura is unappealing and selfish, but, surprisingly, Pedro agrees to marry her. This is, after all, a fairytale. At the first opportunity, he explains to Tita that his love for her in eternal and that if he can’t marry her at least he will be able to be forever near her by marrying Rosura. Tita is simultaneously horrified and flattered.
The insensitive Mama Elena insists that Tita prepare the wedding cake for Pedro and Rosura’s marriage. In the kitchen, Tita’s sorrowful tears inadvertently mix with the batter. When the guests later eat the wedding cake, all begin to weep uncontrollably. They end up at the riverside, each bawling their eyes out over some long lost love still mourned. Tita has mastered the ability to transfer her passions to the food that she prepares.
In another instance, Pedro gives Tita a bouquet of roses. She accidentally pierces her breast on one of the thorn and a drop of her blood mixes into the rose petal sauce for the quail. When it is served, all at the dining table are overcome by intense feelings of heated passion, most especially Tita’s spitfire middle sister Gertrudis (Claudette Maille). Gertrudis is revved up to such a sizzling state of arousal that she has to race to the outhouse for relief. Even so, she sets the outhouse on fire and streaks out of the inferno buck naked across the yard. As luck would have it, a handsome bandito happens to be riding by on horseback at that very moment. She leaps up on the back of his horse and they cantor off into the sagebrush. When Gertrudis is next seen again, she has taken up the life of a revolutionary with her lover and has risen in the ranks to become a commanding officer.
The rest of the story will be left for the amusement of viewers who choose to watch the film. Suffice it to say, there are additional entertaining shenanigans, humor and tragedy galore, and more instances of magical influences from Tita’s concoctions.
Themes: This is not a film with particularly profound themes. Certainly it can be said to touch on issues of love, passion, duty, and rebellion. I suppose that one message is that true love will have its way, especially when facilitated by culinary witchcraft. Food is central to the film and serves as a metaphor for all of the passionate emotions – from jealousy and pain to joy and desire. The relationship between food and sensuality is the core of the film. Among other films, perhaps only Eat Drink Man Woman and Babette's Feast give comparable importance to food in the film’s central narrative.
It might also be worth noting a kind of anti-theme in Like Water For Chocolate. Despite the fact that this film features mainly female lead characters and that it was based on a book written by a female author, it is somewhat regressive in its feminist message in several respects. First, when Tita and Pedro finally culminate their lifelong lust for one another, the bed of their making bursts into flames. While this might nicely symbolize the extraordinary heat of their long denied passion, it also implies that Tita is punished for finally giving vent to her passion. Second, Tita chooses the handsome but shallow and unavailable Pedro over the loving and prosperous doctor (Mario Ivan Martinez) who has treated her with laudable gentleness and understanding. This seems to hark back to a view of women as hopeless romantics drawn to unreliable men and incapable of balancing chemical attraction with sensible good judgment . Third and worst, however, is a line spoken by the narrator, “A breast untouched by a lover is like a useless lump of dough.” I would think that line would have to rankle any self-respecting woman, much less a feminist. Despite these retrogressive tendencies, Like Water For Chocolate gets consistently higher ratings in polls from women on average than from men.
Production Values: Arau has found a splendid balance in this film between romance, passion, humor, and tragedy. He keeps it bittersweet rather than sticky sweet. There lots to admire in the integration of Mexican culture, including its stories, music, and culinary traditions.
Lumi Cavazos is alluring in the lead role. I have to add to her list of qualities the one that follows inevitably from her name – a subtle luminosity. Also deserving of special mention is the buxom and spirited Claudette Maille, who played Gertrudis.
Bottom-Line:Like Water For Chocolate is great fun but seems also to fade quickly from memory. Despite the critical acclaim that it won in 1993 – at the Golden Globes award ceremony, in Britain, and especially in Mexico (where it landed ten awards from the Mexican Academy) – it is nowhere to be seen in the current Internet Database poll of the 250 most popular films (which includes roughly 30 foreign films). Perhaps the Academy Awards were onto something when they omitted it from even nomination in the Best Foreign Film category. It’s not a film that one necessarily longs to go back to see a second or third time. Nevertheless, on a first viewing it impresses with its offbeat story and feverishly exotic quality. I recommend it especially when one is in the mood for a light but engaging film requiring little mental outlay for full enjoyment.
Like Water For Chocolate is a Spanish language film with a running time of 114 minutes. The VHS version has English subtitles. The DVD provides the option of watching it dubbed in English or with subtitles. The DVD is entirely lacking in extras but does, at least, provide a high quality transfer.
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