Like Water for Chocolate

Film Review 2# Theatre 1023

Like Water foe Chocolate

Mariah Sheldon

2/14/07

INTRODUTION:

Like Water for Chocolate is adapted to the screen from the book written in 1989 by Laura Esquirel. Laura Esquirel is the screen writer for the movie also. The movie is set in the early part of the 20th century in Mexico. The film was directed by Alfonso Arau. The cinematography is by Emmanuel Lub Ezki and Steve Bernstein. As this movie was in Spanish with subtitles I am hoping I have the actors correctly attached to the characters’ Lumi Chavazos played Tita who is the primary female role in this movie Marco Leonardi is Pedro her love interest. The other roles in the movie were all very secondary to Tita except for the relationship with her mother Mama Elena played by Rigina Torne.

SYNOPSIS:

Like Water for Chocolate is story of a woman and her only true love Pedro. Tita the youngest of three daughters is denied the option of marriage because in well born Mexican families the youngest daughter forgoes marriage to take care of the parent. The story begins with the birth of Tita in the kitchen of the family ranch house where it was said she wept in her mother’s womb so violently as her mother chopped onions that she caused her mother to go into early labor. The place setting was in Mexico close to the Texas border at the turn of the century. Tita born in the kitchen surrounded by food and spices grew up to be a master chef. The tyrannical oppression of her mother on her life and love caused her cooking to be the embodiment of her emotions. Her lover married her oldest sister in order to be close to Tita they, being denied love and marriage, find creative ways to impart their love. The older sister married to Tita’s lover the middle daughter runs off with rebels type characters. Mama Elena disowns the two disobedient daughters. Tita desperate after hearing of the death of Pedro’s son and her nephew married a doctor and did not return to the ranch Until Mama Elena’s violent death at the hands of out laws. The ending is filled with passion and unrequited loved being met and transformed forever. Throughout the film there are the recipes used to express the love and emotion of Tita. The food is a character as well because it displays so much emotion through the film.

PRODUCTION ANALYSIS:

I will review the cinematographer because this story is potentially filled with so much romance, sexual passion, and sexual arousal. I felt that the angles and shots tried to place the events and people in a real world into a place filled with more fantasy