Like Water for Chocolate

This DVD that Amazon is selling is defective. It won't play past the intro and just freezes in place. I had them replace the 1st one and the 2nd did the exact same thing, My guess is that they have aa defective lot. Amazon really needs to clean this up before they sell any more.

the delivery was speedy and on time the product was exactly what i asked for. I love this movie.. if u enjoy romance then this is the movie for you all in all im very pleased with everything!

I missed this movie when it was released back in 1993 but I've wanted to see it for long time because I've read and heard so much praise for it, and from the description it sounds (and tastes) like my kind of movie:

"The passionate Tita (Lumi Cavazos) is in love with Pedro (Marco Leonardi), but her controlling mother (Regina Torne) forbids her from marrying him. When Pedro instead marries her sister, Tita throws herself into her cooking -- and discovers she can transfer her emotions through the food she prepares."

Passionate romance that is hot like boiling water for chocolate, delicious food that changes the people in the most amazing ways, magical realism - these are the components for a perfect cinema dish. I was salivating while waiting for the DVD to arrive from Netflix...

Well, now I've seen it and even though I like it, it did not seem so magical. Of course, this is very much in the South American literature tradition of magic realism. More than once, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez came to my mind, especially his two major novels, 100 Hundreds Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. I easily recognized supernatural realities that organically become a part of everyday life in a Mexican Farm in the beginning of the 20th century. Like in "Love in the Time of Cholera" the unrequited and undying love that lives through decades and all sorts of obstacles, plays the major part in Like Water for chocolate. The film has some beautifully done emotional and sensual scenes but overall, something is missing. Maybe it is simply impossible to adequately adapt this sort of literature to the screen? Whatever is truly magical, unique, and beautiful in the words, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters where you can create your own vision of what you read simply does not always make you accept fully the film creators' vision. What is meaningful, moving, and passionate on the pages of the brilliantly written book, may lose its charm and seem preposterous or pretentious while being adapted to the film. Like Water for Chocolate is an entertaining movie with the exotic settings and very interesting idea of expressing the repressed love, unfulfilled longing, desperation, and hope in cooking and in the ability to change the people's lives and fates through the meals they consume. It was just difficult for me to fully accept the fateful romance between two main characters and the old tradition of not letting a youngest daughter in the family to get married and to fulfill her own dreams of happiness. Maybe this book requires another cinematic reading with better production values including more fluid camera work. The way it is, some scenes just end abruptly, and the following scenes would not make much sense. Where the movie succeeds for me, is in my wish to find and read the novel, to capture its magic to which each reader keeps referring, and to try to cook some of the Tita's dishes. The novel which consists of twelve chapters named after twelve months opens each chapter with a new recipe. Now when I think of it, if Tita had been happily married to Pedro, she more likely would not have become such a genius in cooking and there would not have been her delicious recipes for us to enjoy.

3.5/5

This story captivated me. I thought it sounded like something I would adore. But the characters were so one-dimensional, that there was nothing for me to relate to. I felt so disconnected from the story and nearly everyone involved. A particular scene with the mother was the only one that made any of the characters seem the least bit real and complicated (as we all really are). I would love to see it done totally differently, but I could not sit through this one again.

Me fascinó esta historia. Pero no me podía relacionar con los personajes. Me sentí tan desconectada de la historia que fue difícil terminar de ver esta película. Sólo había una escena en el filme entero que hizo que un personaje (la mamá, en este caso) pereciera a un ser humano de verdad. Me encantaría ver este cuento contado totalmente diferente, pero no podría aguantar una vista de ésta de nuevo.

Like Water for Chocolate.... the only connection is the fluidity of the element... even that is a lie.... chocolate is oily, rich and thick... Water is none of these things... In life, if you try to substitute water where the situation requires chocolate, well... in a recipe the same goes. The cake will fall flat... the lovers will run away.... Life will be unhappy.

Recipes are passed from generation to generation, from mother to daughter most often, or perhaps from aunt to niece, whichever, food and love go together as inherited traits in our character.

This movie generates many emotions and should be watched with friends and lots of popcorn!

Purchased as a gift for a friend who confessed she has not really taken time to watch movies over the last 20 years but wanted to begin. I felt that she should watch at least one foreign language film to begin her film appreciation stage. It takes some time to get accustomed to reading sub-titles, but there is something alluring about hearing another language. I suppose this version may have had English dubbed over, but since it was a gift I did not open the package. It camed sealed same as if purchased in store. It is a Christmas gift for 2008 and so we'll see what she thinks after the new year.