Product Description

In turn of the century Mexico, a young woman loves a boy who her mother forces to marry her sister.
No Track Information Available
Media Type: DVD
Artist: CAVAZOS/LEONARDI
Title: LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE
Street Release Date: 06/07/2005
Domestic
Genre: FOREIGN

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1159 in DVD
• Brand: CAVAZOS/LEONARDI
• Released on: 2000-03-14
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Spanish
• Subtitled in: English
• Dubbed in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Expect to be very hungry (and perhaps amorous) after watching this contemporary classic in the small genre of food movies that includes Babette's Feast and Big Night. Director Alfonso Arau (A Walk in the Clouds), adapting a novel by his former wife, Laura Esquivel, tells the story of a young woman (Lumi Cavazos) who learns to suppress her passions under the eye of a stern mother, but channels them into her cooking. The result is a steady stream of cuisine so delicious as to be an almost erotic experience for those lucky enough to have a bite. The film's quotient of magic realism feels a little stock, but the story line is good and Arau's affinity for the sensuality of food (and of nature) is sublime. You might want to rush off to a good Mexican restaurant afterward, but that's a good thing. --Tom Keogh

From The New Yorker
Alfonso Arau's sticky, lusty, and rather ludicrous movie is set on a Mexican ranch in 1910. The head of the family is the unyielding Mama Elena (Regina Torné), who determines the destinies of her three daughters. The youngest, Tita (Lumi Cavazos), must stay at home and never marry. Needless to say, she promptly falls in love. It's the old story, passions trying to burst through the shell of repression, and it infects the rest of the film: well-behaved wedding guests suddenly grow weepy or horny, and the old social order is menaced by bands of roaming revolutionaries. But what should be a struggle turns into a giggle; Arau's style loses its balance, swooning into endless closeups of damp brows and heaving bosoms. Just in case we miss the point, there's also a persistent voice-over designed to boil our blood ("voluptuously, ardently fragrant and utterly sensual"). The plot is full of cookery, but it's an overloaded metaphor; the kitchen stands for the bedroom, and that's that. There's none of the patient, civilizing artistry that we saw in the cooking scenes of "Babette's Feast." Scripted by Laura Esquivel from her own novel, the movie feels like second-hand Magic Realism: it takes a shortcut to weirdness without hooking into anything substantial. This peaks at the end, when a couple makes love inside what appears to be a giant barbecue. Some like it hot, sure, but this hot? In Spanish. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Depressing Drama
After reading a few reviews and hearing that it was similar to "Simply Irresistable," I thought this would be a good romantic movie. (Whoever said it was like "Simply Irresistable" is crazy.) It had some romantic moments, but overall this was very depressing, and frustrating, with a mother that drove you mad.
I would not recommend this movie.

LIKE WATER ON CHOCOLATE
This is one of my favorite movies. I had it on VCR and wanted to but the DVD in case th VCR wears out. It offers a cultural insite, is funny, sad, sexual and a really good story line.

Great flick
i love this movie. its passionate and not a cheesy love story. i wanted some food after watching this movie! :p