Food can warm you, can nourish you, and can make you feel so much better. Food is also the way people can keep their culture, with techniques and knowledge passed down by generations to better make use of the ingredients in the country. However, in Like Water for Chocolate, food is the means for rebellion, for breaking free from tradition, with Tita, who’s stuck in the kitchen by her mom, infusing her creations with so much emotion that the rest of her family is compelled to find a love just as passionate as hers is for Pedro. It’s a passionate adaptation made by director Alfonso Arau for his wife and the novel’s author Laura Esquivel, and it’s just so well done that it’s easy to be swept up in the family’s unfulfilled desires.
Tita is passionately in love with Pedro, but her controlling mother forbids her from marrying him. When Pedro marries her sister, Tita throws herself into her cooking and discovers she can transfer her emotions through the food she prepares, infecting all who eat it with her intense heartbreak.
As the youngest daughter of the family, Tita is forbidden to marry her true love Pedro, since she must care for her mother Elena until her death. Because of this, Pedro weds her older sister Rosaura. To ease her frustration, Tita learns how to cook, leaving her to discover her ability to infuse her emotions into the food she makes.
The performances… Maybe the casting. With a writer-director couple, it’s interesting to see that they chose married couple Lumi Cavazos and Marco Leonardi to portray Tita and Pedro respectively, but it’s a choice that works, with these two beautiful people looking so obsessed with each other.
Yum!
Golden Globes
1 nomination
BAFTA
1 nomination
Spirit Awards
1 nomination
Sundance
1 nomination
Nat. Board of Review
1 win
Goya Awards
1 nomination
