When I was an undergraduate, my college had its own TV station that would, from time to time, run movies. Some classics, many recent, the set-up wasn’t that mysterious as new movies tended to show up about a month after they got to VHS: the station had four VCRs hooked up and programmed to run whatever tapes they had inside them at various points during the day. Someone just had to come in and change the tapes from time-to-time. I suspect I saw part, but not all, of Like Water for Chocolate then largely because as I watched it Sunday evening, it sure did look familiar in places but I clearly hadn’t seen all of it.
Oh, I have now, but I just had this nagging feeling I’d seen this Mexican piece of magical realism before while I was watching it. That and the fact the movie was clearly dubbed over to English kept throwing me off.
Aside from a framing device as a woman tells the story of one of her deceased relatives, this is the story of a young woman named Tita (Lumi Cavazos), the youngest of three daughters to a prosperous rancher in turn of the 20th century Mexico. Her father dies suddenly not long after her birth when someone suggests that one of his three daughters isn’t really his, but there’s another problem for Tita: according to her mother Mama Elena (Regina Torne), family tradition dictates that the youngest daughter of a family may never marry but instead must care for her mother for the rest of her mother’s days. And the thing about Mama Elena is she means every word of that. Fortunately for Tita, she has a secondary mother figure in the form of the cook Nacha (Ada Carrasco) who teaches Tita how to cook. Unfortunately for her, she is deeply in love with Pedro (Marco Leonardi), and that feeling is mutual. When Pedro and his father come over to talk about allowing Tita and Pedro to marry, Mama Elena will hear nothing of it, but instead offers the hand of Tita’s older sister Rosaura (Yareli Arizmendi), an offer Pedro accepts only so he can continue to be near Tita.
By the by, the third sister Gertrudis (Claudette Maille) has her own subplot involving her own love life that I felt earned the movie some good comedic moments but she’s not much involved in the love triangle between Rosaura, Tita, and Pedro.
Now, looking after Mama Elena might not be that bad a thing if it weren’t that the woman is incredibly demanding, spiteful, and harsh to, oh, everyone but especially Tita. She’s not the sort of woman who has much of a kind word for anyone, and she will do what she can for the sake of propriety to keep Tita and Pedro as far away from each other as she can. That said, Tita’s own efforts in the kitchen yield their own rewards as she can infuse what she prepares with her own emotions, leading to wedding cakes that create heartache for all the guests and other delicacies that allow her to communicate with Pedro without saying a word whenever he comes over for dinner. But this is already a delicate situation, especially as Rosaura starts to become more and more like her mother as she gets older.
This was what I would consider a “cute” movie in that in the grand scheme of things, the stakes were never higher than Tita and Pedro’s love for each other. They met cute, managed to stay in love without any trouble no matter what obstacles time, space, or Mama Elena tossed their way, and the effects of Tita’s food make up for a lot. This is a movie where we might get an angry ghost, but giving it a good telling-off could be enough to make it go away forever, and well-meaning doctors may be heartbroken but ultimately understand decisions made by others. I get the impression this was what the dull Chocolat was aiming for and never quite got. Not generally my genre and the dubbing was very distracting, I found the movie charming as two lovers fought the forces of family and tradition to find a way to be together, to say nothing of keeping awful family traditions to continue to make others suffer over time. Then again, you probably don’t want to mess with the person who prepares your food anyway.
Grade: B
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