I missed this movie when it was released back in 1993 but I've wanted to see it for long time because I've read and heard so much praise for it, and from the description it sounds (and tastes) like my kind of movie: "The passionate Tita (Lumi Cavazos) is in love with Pedro (Marco Leonardi), but her controlling mother (Regina Torne) forbids her from marrying him. When Pedro instead marries her sister, Tita throws herself into her cooking -- and discovers she can transfer her emotions through the food she prepares." Passionate romance that is hot like boiling water for chocolate, delicious food that changes the people in the most amazing ways, magical realism - these are the components for a perfect cinema dish. I was salivating while waiting for the DVD to arrive from Netflix...
Well, now I've seen it and even though I like it, it did not seem so magical. Of course, this is very much in the South American literature tradition of magic realism. More than once, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez came to my mind, especially his two major novels, 100 Hundreds Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. I easily recognized supernatural realities that organically become a part of everyday life in a Mexican Farm in the beginning of the 20th century. Like in "Love in the Time of Cholera" the unrequited and undying love that lives through decades and all sorts of obstacles, plays the major part in Like Water for chocolate. The film has some beautifully done emotional and sensual scenes but overall, something is missing. Maybe it is simply impossible to adequately adapt this sort of literature to the screen? Whatever is truly magical, unique, and beautiful in the words, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters where you can create your own vision of what you read simply does not always make you accept fully the film creators' vision. What is meaningful, moving, and passionate on the pages of the brilliantly written book, may lose its charm and seem preposterous or pretentious while being adapted to the film. Like Water for Chocolate is an entertaining movie with the exotic settings and very interesting idea of expressing the repressed love, unfulfilled longing, desperation, and hope in cooking and in the ability to change the people's lives and fates through the meals they consume. It was just difficult for me to fully accept the fateful romance between two main characters and the old tradition of not letting a youngest daughter in the family to get married and to fulfill her own dreams of happiness. Maybe this book requires another cinematic reading with better production values including more fluid camera work. The way it is, some scenes just end abruptly, and the following scenes would not make much sense. Where the movie succeeds for me, is in my wish to find and read the novel, to capture its magic to which each reader keeps referring, and to try to cook some of the Tita's dishes. The novel which consists of twelve chapters named after twelve months opens each chapter with a new recipe. Now when I think of it, if Tita had been happily married to Pedro, she more likely would not have become such a genius in cooking and there would not have been her delicious recipes for us to enjoy.
Well, now I've seen it and even though I like it, it did not seem so magical. Of course, this is very much in the South American literature tradition of magic realism. More than once, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez came to my mind, especially his two major novels, 100 Hundreds Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. I easily recognized supernatural realities that organically become a part of everyday life in a Mexican Farm in the beginning of the 20th century. Like in "Love in the Time of Cholera" the unrequited and undying love that lives through decades and all sorts of obstacles, plays the major part in Like Water for chocolate. The film has some beautifully done emotional and sensual scenes but overall, something is missing. Maybe it is simply impossible to adequately adapt this sort of literature to the screen? Whatever is truly magical, unique, and beautiful in the words, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters where you can create your own vision of what you read simply does not always make you accept fully the film creators' vision. What is meaningful, moving, and passionate on the pages of the brilliantly written book, may lose its charm and seem preposterous or pretentious while being adapted to the film. Like Water for Chocolate is an entertaining movie with the exotic settings and very interesting idea of expressing the repressed love, unfulfilled longing, desperation, and hope in cooking and in the ability to change the people's lives and fates through the meals they consume. It was just difficult for me to fully accept the fateful romance between two main characters and the old tradition of not letting a youngest daughter in the family to get married and to fulfill her own dreams of happiness. Maybe this book requires another cinematic reading with better production values including more fluid camera work. The way it is, some scenes just end abruptly, and the following scenes would not make much sense. Where the movie succeeds for me, is in my wish to find and read the novel, to capture its magic to which each reader keeps referring, and to try to cook some of the Tita's dishes. The novel which consists of twelve chapters named after twelve months opens each chapter with a new recipe. Now when I think of it, if Tita had been happily married to Pedro, she more likely would not have become such a genius in cooking and there would not have been her delicious recipes for us to enjoy.