LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE: Lumi Cavazos, Marco Leonardi, Regina Torne. Rated R (nudity, sex, profanity, violence)
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By Chris Hicks
Deseret News movie critic
A multiple-character romantic melodrama, "Like Water for Chocolate" plays out like a TV miniseries of the Danielle Steel variety, with star-crossed lovers, betrayal, a domineering matriarch and even rebels in the mountains.
There is also a great use of food as a metaphor for sensuality.
All of this makes for a feverish film, bolstered by grand performances, especially from the luminous Lumi Cavazos in the lead.
"Like Water for Chocolate" (which refers to a Mexican double-entendre, boiling water with cocoa to make chocolate and overheated libidos) is set in Mexico during the early part of this century, and Tita (Cavazos) is the third of three daughters born to stern and stubborn ranch-owner Mama Elena.
Shortly after Tita's birth, her father dies of a heart attack — and Mama Elena swears that Tita will never marry, that she will uphold a family tradition that requires the youngest daughter to care for her mother until the mother's death.
As she gets older, Tita and a neighboring young man, Pedro (Marco Leonardi), fall in love. Mama Elena, of course, refuses to let the match happen. But she does offer another daughter, Rosaura (Yareli Arizmendi), to Pedro.
Tita is shocked when Pedro agrees to marry Rosaura — which he does so he can live in the same house with Tita. But Tita feels a sense of both betrayal and exhilaration at the prospect, and her conflicted feelings grow even more difficult as time passes.
And this is just the beginning. To come are more twists in their lives, with one sister running off with a revolutionary (in a most unexpected way) and a number of strange spiritual encounters.
But to give more plotting away would be to soften the joyous excursions that await the audience. Producer-director Alfonso Arau and screenwriter Laura Esquivel (adapting her own novel) have managed to pack in an amazing amount of material and character development in less than two hours — more than most TV miniseries manage in four or six hours. And the film is bathed in a kind of visual glow, especially in the many cooking and eating sequences, that adds an extra element of sensuality.
As well made as it all is, however, credit for its highest level of success must go to the multileveled performance of Cavazos in the lead. She exhibits so many emotions that even the film's most overheated and wild-eyed exchanges seem palatable. And there are a number of sequences that are way over the top.
Still, on the whole, this is a grand film experience. Foreign-film fans will not be disappointed.
"Like Water for Chocolate" is rated R for a fair amount of nudity, some sex and a few scattered profanities. There is also a bit of violence.
© 1993 Deseret News Publishing Co.