I know the film got all kinds of worthy awards, but I�m convinced that those Cannes-types have never read the book by Laura Esquivel, because the book � one of my favourites ever - is vastly superior. This, in comparison, is limp and fussy.
Tita, as the youngest daughter, is bound by her Mexican family tradition never to marry and look after her mother instead. Pedro, the love of her life, is forced to marry her sister Rosaura in order to be closer to Tita, a solution that doesn�t really please anybody. Tita is forced by her overbearing mother and mean-spirited sister to keep her heartbreak to herself, and can only express herself through her cooking. She is an outstanding cook, and is so bound up in the kitchen that whatever she feels when she cooks is magically transmitted to the eater.
What the film-makers forgot is that this is a film about food. And sex and love, but whoever thought these things could be separated surely never had a clue (or a good shag). They got in all the love, but forgot to lend any life to the incessant eating scenes which the story is dependent on. I wanted Nigella-style food porn, lots of finger-licking and fleshy kitchen scenes to drool over; all you get is a few picky moments at dinner and the odd shot of a tomato salad or two.
This is not an easy story to mess up, visually, romantically, or comically. For example, after Tita is given some roses by Pedro, she decides to make a dinner using the petals. The lust involved in the roses and therefore, in Tita�s meal, is then consumed by Tita�s other sister at the dinner table. She gets so hot and bothered that she throws off her clothes, and jumps naked onto a passing soldier�s horse and rides off into the sunset with him, shagging all the way. It�s a fantastically sexy, funny scene which is, I�m sure you�ll agree, pretty difficult to do in a boring or joyless way. But it is, boring and joyless, like most of the film. Still, thanks to the book itself the story is good and inventive, the acting is good, and if all else fails then you can just drool over Pedro, who is just about the only edible thing in the film. But if you have a choice, then for god�s sake, read the book. |
