Although most of us Epinionators who have seen and reviewed Mexican actor-director Alfonso Arau's internationally acclaimed Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) have watched it in the comfort of our own homes on either VHS tapes or DVDs, I have also seen in it in a theater, albeit one located in a posh mall in Bogota, Colombia.

It was December of 1993, and my mother and I were visiting our family for the Christmas holidays.  Mom had last been in Bogota some eight years earlier, but I had not returned since 1974 after a somewhat dreadful (for an 11-year-old kid, that is) summer vacation which was cut short after one month "in country" due to the cold, the boredom and the expected bout of homesickness.

Because Arau's film, adapted by his wife Laura Esquivel from her own novel, was then making its post-awards international world tour and making a stop at the city known as The Athens of the Americas, two of my cousins invited us to a screening at the Teatro de Santa Barbara, a very luxurious cinema with comfortable chairs, waiters that took one's orders for snacks and even cocktails, and a big, almost IMAX-like screen.

Though I will not get into details, our first viewing of the movie was memorable not just by the unusually-luxurious theater or the movie itself, but rather by the fact that we almost didn't get to see it at all because my Aunt Martha (who was driving) somehow made a wrong turn and got us stuck in Bogota's dreadful rush-hour traffic...for three hours!

Now, for me the movie was, and still is, wonderfully moving and a memorable viewing experience, but I felt somewhat embarrassed the first time I watched it with my then 40-something-year-old cousins, my elderly aunt and my mom because of its unabashed sensuality.

16 Years Later.....

I didn't watch Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) again for many years since that infamous day shortly before Christmas of 1993; I liked it enough to later read the novel in its original Spanish edition when we got back to Miami and of course Mom and I always talk about the three-hour traffic jam we endured to see it. 

However, even though I had to relearn English (which I'd spoken till I was four) as a second language when Mom and I (my older sister joined us later after an abortive attempt to live on her own in Colombia) moved back to the States in 1972, I don't watch Hispanic-oriented television or movies much.  TV fare in Univision and Telemundo bores me to tears, and I'm not a big fan of Spanish-language movies.  Thus, as much as I had enjoyed Como agua para chocolate when I saw it in Teatro Santa Barbara, it never became a "must-get" addition to my video library in any format.

My sister, though, is enamored of all things Latin and will watch such fare as telenovelas on either Univision or Telemundo when she's not working, and more than half her library of books is in Spanish.  So to help her get over her aversion for tech changes when DVDs became the dominant home video format and get her to upgrade, I ordered the released-in-2000 DVD (by, oddly enough, Walt Disney Video) from Amazon four years ago so she would have a disc to try out her also-given-by-us DVD player with.

For some reason, my sister had never thought of bringing Como agua para chocolate over so we could all watch it, so last weekend I asked her to bring it, partly so we'd have something to do on a dull Sunday evening, and partly so I could have something new to write about.

Como agua para chocolate

Adapted from her own novel by actress-writer Laura Esquivel (Tacos de oro, Entelineas) and directed by her husband Alfonso Arau (perhaps best known to American moviegoers as the Mexican bandit "El Guapo" in The Three Amigos!), Como agua para chocolate is (as another reviewer here noted) a Mexican version of the Cinderella story, in which a bitter matriarch insists that her youngest daughter has to follow a family tradition and give up any notions of marriage or love and care for her till she dies.

The movie starts in the Mexico of the early 1900s: Revolution is in the air already, and the wealthy Mama Elena is giving birth to her third and youngest daughter Tita (who'll be played by several actresses but will eventually be fleshed out by Lumi Cavazos).  

Mama Elena's ranch-owning husband, meanwhile, is being congratulated for becoming a father again...until someone comes and whispers in his ears that his lovely blonde wife has been doing it with a dark-skinned man.  Of course, this news doesn't sit well with Mama Elena's husband; indeed, it kills him on the day of the last baby's birth.

Mama Elena, played excellently by Regina Tome, is - of course - consumed by guilt by this, but the guilt becomes a bitter anger that is focused on Tita, who may or may not have been the fruit of her aduklterous affair.  Mama Elena dotes on her older daughters Rosaura (Yareli Arizmendi) and Gertrudis (Claudette Maille) but delegates the raising of Tita to Nacha (Ada Carrasco) the mestizo cook who prepares all kinds of yummy foods for Mama Elena and her daughters.

Nacha: You will be so beautiful that the first boy who sees you will want to marry you.
Mamá Elena: Nacha! Don't say that. As my youngest daughter, Tita will care for me until the day I die. She won't marry.

As in the Cinderella story, there's a Prince Charming of sorts: Pedro, a boy from a nearby estate who falls in love with Tita when they're both children.  They first see each other when they're nine, but eventually he'll grow up to be played by Marco Leonardi, an Italian actor who has appeared in Cinema Paradiso and Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

Alas, Mama Elena's tyrannical rule that family tradition trumps love nixes any hopes for Pedro to marry Tita, so the young man proposes a compromise.  To be near Tita, he will marry Rosaura instead.

In a conventional narrative, this would never really be believable.  Mama Elena - a shrew so mean and evil that even Petrucchio himself could not tame - would have been too wily to be fooled by this and said "No," and Rosaura would have insisted that they move far, far away, maybe even to another galaxy, to separate her hunky husband from her virginally beautiful younger sister.

But Esquivel's story is not a conventional narrative; it's a fable of love, sex, food and "magical realism," and Tita - the often downtrodden and despised child who has been relegated to being Mama Elena's scullery maid - has the most unusual gift: she can impart her innermost emotions to the dishes she has learned to prepare in Nacha's homey kitchen.

Thus, if Tita feels unhappy and cries while fixing dinner, the salt from her tears will be added to the ingredients.  Anyone who eats the dish will - sooner or later - be caught in the grip of great melancholy and start to cry.

Likewise, if she gets the hots for Pedro and accidentally gets some of her blood into some quail with rose petal sauce (an actual dish, too!), well, then everyone gets pretty horny...even the local priest.

Como agua para chocolate takes place over a 30-year span of time and there are lots of other subplots - some funny, some tragic - which encompass the upheaval of the Mexican Revolution and its aftermath. 

At its heart, the film is a mix of Latin American magical realism and some of the best-known love stories in which forbidden passions and evil stepmothers (or evil mothers, period) take center stage.  Savvy viewers will see touches of Shakespeare and the Grimm Brothers' Snow White tale added in, with a touch of sensuality added for good measure.

Though there are dubbed editions out there on VHS and maybe even DVD, I recommend this movie be watched in its Spanish-language DVD with English subtitles instead.  Sure, it's pretty challenging for many viewers to listen in one language and read in another, but to me a dubbed soundtrack always sounds, well, artificial and over-acted. 

In the end, though, even if viewers want to watch it in dubbed editions it won't matter.  Como agua para chocolate has it all - fine directing by Arau, a wonderful and sensitive screenplay by Esquivel and awesome performances by the entire cast.  It's clearly a movie which deserves its reputation as one of the most popular foreign films to hit these (and other) shores, one that will be long remembered after its last fade out and the word FIN comes up on screen.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age