Like Water for Chocolate (film)


Like Water for Chocolate is a 1992 Mexican film in the style of magical realism based on the popular novel, published in 1989 by first-time Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel. It earned ten Ariel Awards including the Best Picture and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film became the highest-grossing foreign-language film ever released in the United States at the time. The film was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 65th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.

Plot

The movie is about a woman named Tita living in the early 1900s experiencing the struggles of love, family dynamics and family tradition.
The movie opens with a young lady cutting onions, expressing the influences of emotions and cooking. She then begins a story with the birth of a girl named Tita. Tita's mother, Mama Elena, gives birth on the kitchen table right after her water breaks, with the assistance of the house cook, Nacha. Shortly thereafter, Mama Elena's husband dies of a heart attack after a stranger viciously tells him that his wife had an affair and one of his daughters isn't his. During the funeral, Mama Elena explains to Nacha that she can no longer have children and the family tradition dictates that Tita, being the youngest child, cannot marry but must take care of her mother until her death. However, Tita's sisters Rosaura and Gertrudis can marry off. Nacha takes charge of teaching Tita how to cook food in flavorful ways. Tita learns to infuse her emotions with food.
Years later, a young man named Pedro Muzquiz professes his love and desire to marry Tita, who feels the same way about Pedro. On the day of Tita's birthday, Pedro arrives with his father Don Pascual Muzquiz to ask for her hand in marriage. Mama Elena explains why Tita will not marry and instead offers Rosaura. Rosaura is delighted, Tita is devastated, and Gertrudis and Chencha, the house maid, are disappointed. Nacha overhears Pedro tell his father that he is only marrying Rosaura to stay close to Tita. Nacha informs Tita of this news, but Tita is too upset to believe it. While cooking the wedding cake, Tita cries into the batter. During the wedding reception, Pedro tells Tita that he is still in love with her. Suspicious that Tita and Pedro are having an affair, Mama Elena threatens Tita to stay away from Pedro. As the guests eat the wedding cake, everyone is overcome with great sadness for lost lovers and begins to cry, which is followed by vomiting. Overcome with the sadness, Mama Elena rushes to her bedroom and pulls out a hidden jewelry box. She uses a tiny key hidden in locket around her neck to open it. She tearfully looks at the photo of a well dressed mulatto man. It is implied that the rumours about Mama Elena's affair are true. That evening, Tita finds Nacha dead on the floor holding a picture of her husband.
Sometime later, Rosaura becomes pregnant. One day, Pedro brings Tita a bouquet of roses to celebrate Tita being the head cook. Mama Elena demands that Tita throw them away, but Tita instead uses them to create a rose sauce for a quail dinner. While eating the meal, everyone except Rosaura becomes filled with sensual gratification. Rosaura becomes sick and leaves the table. Gertrudis becomes hot and goes to the outdoor shower. Gertrudis becomes so overheated that the shower house catches fire. Running naked out and away from the fire, Gertrudis runs into Juan Alejandrez, a soldier fighting in the Mexican revolution, on horseback. Filled with a strong attraction to Juan, Gertrudis immediately jumps on the horse and leaves with him. Tita sees this but tells Mama Elena that Gertrudis was kidnapped and the soldiers set the shower house on fire. Mama Elena is informed by a family priest that Gertrudis was forced into prostitution. Tita secretly sends Gertrudis her things. Rosaura gives birth to a sickly son named Roberto. Rosaura is too sick to nurse Roberto, so Tita nurses him with Pedro monitoring. Still suspicious that Tita and Pedro are having an affair, Mama Elena sends Rosaura, Pedro and Roberto to live in Texas. A couple of months later, Chencha informs Mama Elena and Tita of Roberto's death. Tita is greatly saddened by this news, but Mama Elena tells her to show no emotion and to continue on with the kitchen chores. This causes Tita to have an angry outburst, and Mama Elena slaps her with a wooden spoon resulting with a nose bleed. Tita runs into the bird tower and Mama Elena has the ladder taken down. After a week of being in the bird tower, Tita is rescued by Dr. John Brown, a family doctor, who takes her to his home in Texas for treatment. Chencha goes to visit Tita and is shocked that she has recovered. Tita tells Chencha to tell Mama Elena that she is never coming back to the ranch. Dr. Brown, who has fallen in love with Tita, proposes marriage and Tita accepts. Back at the ranch, a group of bandits invade the property, rape Chencha and kill Mama Elena by pushing her off a cliff. Tita and Dr. Brown return to the ranch to prepare Mama Elena's funeral. While dressing Mama Elena's body, Tita discovers the locket and jewelry box containing the picture of Mama Elena's lover. Pedro and Rosaura, now pregnant again, return for Mama Elena's funeral, and Rosaura's water breaks. Rosaura has a difficult labor but gives birth to a healthy baby girl named Esperanza. However, Esperanza refuses to be fed by Rosaura, so Tita once again takes on the duties of nursing. Due to complications in childbirth, Rosaura is no longer able to have kids. To Tita and Pedro's dismay, Rosaura imposes the family tradition on Esperanza. Upon finding out about Tita's engagement to Dr. Brown, Pedro becomes jealous, and he sneaks into Tita's room to have sex with her.
During a large social dinner Gertrudis, now a military General, returns to the ranch with Juan Alejandrez, now her husband, along with their squad. Tita suspects that she is pregnant with Pedro's child, and tells Gertrudis her concerns. Gertrudis advises Tita to tell Pedro, and reminds Tita that the love she and Pedro share is true and they should be together. Tita confesses her concerns to Pedro after he walks in on the conversation. Later, Tita begins to have illusions of Mama Elena chastising her for sleeping with Pedro. While singing up to Tita's window with Juan, Pedro catches on fire. Tita treats Pedro's wounds until Dr. Brown shows up. Pedro, still jealous of Tita's engagement with Dr. Brown, wants her to break it off and threatens to tell Dr. Brown about their one-night stand and her pregnancy. Tita tells Pedro she's not pregnant; it was a false alarm. However, out of guilt, Tita tells Dr. Brown of her infidelity and apologizes for hurting him. Dr. Brown accepts her apology and states that he still wants to be with her, but he will accept whatever decision she makes of their relationship. Rosaura confronts Tita about her relationship with Pedro. Rosaura threatens to kick Tita off the ranch if she goes anywhere near her daughter Esperanza, and dictates that Esperanza will never marry per family tradition. Many years later, Esperanza marries Dr. Brown's son. It is revealed through gossip that Tita stayed on the ranch to fight for Esperanza's right to marry and Pedro woke up to find Rosaura dead from an unknown gastro-intestinal illness, releasing Esperanza from the family tradition.
Pedro tells Tita that with Esperanza married off, they can rekindle their romance. After the wedding they both go to the guest house to make love. While having sex, Pedro has a heart attack and dies. Devastated, Tita commits suicide by swallowing matches, causing the room to catch on fire, which spreads throughout the entire property. The young woman narrating the whole story reveals that she is the daughter of Esperanza. She reveals that when Esperanza returned home from her honeymoon to find the property burned to ashes, she discovered Tita's cook book, which she kept and passed down to her daughter.

Characters

Gender

Differing gender roles and values are central to the de la Garza family. The film complicates the roles that tradition expects Tita, Getrudis, and Rosaura to play. Tita, a maternal caretaker, breaks tradition; Gertrudis embodies the duality of the male and the female; and Rosaura, an upholder of the traditional female role, fails to fulfill it. Rosaura strives to be a traditional female matron. She marries her sister Tita's one true love Pedro and adopts the role of wife. Her primary duties are to cook, to clean, and to take care of her children. The problem is that she cannot cook, cannot clean, and cannot nurse her own baby. Next to bend her gender is Gertrudis, offspring of an illicit affair between Mama Elena and her paramour. We know from early on that Gertrudis does not fit the ladylike mold. She is a tomboy, openly disagreeing with her mother and her traditional values. She encourages Tita to court Pedro even though he is married to their sister. When Tita's emotions enter into the rose petal dish she serves the family for dinner, Gertrudis eats and becomes so aroused that her body begins to steam. She runs to the outhouse, her heat setting it on fire, and departs home on the back of a horse ridden by a soldier of the Mexican Revolution. When Gertrudis mysteriously returns one night, we learn that she is a soldier fighting in the Revolution. Married to the man on the horse, she now commands her husband's troops. Tita is her sisters’ opposite. She is a caretaker and family cook. Everyone loves her cooking and Tita miraculously serves as nursemaid to Rosaura's baby, since Rosaura is unable to produce milk. The differing gender roles give each character depth and significance, highlighting the opposites at work in each sister. In doing so the film displays strong women breaking barriers and redefining what it means to be a female.

Tradition

Tradition is central to this movie. Tita, Gertrudis and the Mexican Revolution itself all fight against it. The movie's main conflict is a family tradition which forbids the youngest daughter from marrying so that she will be free to take care of her mother. This requirement sets up a battle between Tita and her mother, Mama Elena. Tita struggles to live her own life; Mama Elena fights to keep Tita at home. So fierce is Mama Elena's desire to uphold tradition that she orders her oldest daughter, Rosaura, to marry Pedro, Tita's one true love. Gertrudis, the middle child and offspring of an illicit affair between Mama Elena and her lover, runs away from home and joins the people fighting to end the dictatorship and corruption afflicting the common folk of Mexico. Tired of the tradition that only the wealthy landowners had wealth and power, the people revolted, fighting for the workers of the land. Gertrudis' battle against the government parallels the battle between Tita and Elena. Both fight for change. In the war Gertrudis becomes a leader of an all-male rebel group. The men both listen and respect her. Gertrudis challenges tradition and becomes a successful leader. Tita's challenge to tradition will also be successful and portends successful change for Mexico.
On the other hand, while tradition serves well to help pass down a family's customs or even cultural customs, often tradition can often be viewed negatively and tear families and society apart because of how it can mistreat those in society who deviate from tradition. Mexican culture has in fact long expressed this coerced marriage rule in which women opinions are left unconsidered, and as a result these traditions lead to the mistreatment of women. This mistreatment also happens in the de la Garza family where the family tradition prevents the main character, Tita, from marrying Pedro due to the rule that the youngest daughter must not marry. Thus, breaking this specific tradition is a main theme within the film. One way this is represented in the film is through the character of Mama Elena as her oppressive and tyrannical force to Tita. Her character displays how corruptive traditions such as forced marriage hinder others and tear groups apart, as Mama Elena does to Tita to prevent her from marrying Pedro. However, with the help of Tita's magical cooking that eventually breaks the family free from tradition, Tita and her sister, Gertrudis, not only break barriers and the gender roles in their society, but also help establish a tradition to start treating each other equally.

Filming locations

Like Water for Chocolate received critical acclaim from critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 87%, based on 46 reviews, and an average rating of 7.56/10. On Metacritic, it has a score of 86 out of 100 based on 18 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
The American release of this film is quite shorter than the original Mexican version. In the original release, you see the main character Tita return home to take care of her dying mother; in the American release, this complete sequence is removed and instead Tita only returns home for her mother's funeral.
The film became the highest-grossing foreign-language film ever released in the United States and Canada at the time with a gross of $21.6 million, surpassing the previous record of $20.2 million set by I Am Curious released in 1969.

Year-end lists

Ariel Awards

The Ariel Awards are awarded annually by the Mexican Academy of Film Arts and Sciences in Mexico. Como Agua Para Chocolate received ten awards out of 14 nominations.

Golden Globe Awards