The scriptwriter Laura Esquivel, renowned and respected in her own country, wrote her first novel in 1989 and within a year Como agua para chocolate became one of the biggest best¬sellers ever in Mexico. The film version, produced and directed by Alfonso Arau, has been just as successful, if not more so. The title refers to the traditional way the Aztecs make chocolate; the water has to be boiling wildly when the cocoa beans are thrown in to make the richest chocolate. It is also a saying to indicate that someone is about to boil over.The film is set on the border between Texas and Mexico in 1910, during the Mexican Revolution, and tells the surrealistic, erotic and comic story of Tita, the youngest of three daughters of a widow on a remote ranch. Pedro (played by Marco Leonardi, the teenage hero in Cinema Paradiso) wants to marry Tita, but tradition rules that the youngest daughter may never marry: she has to care for her mother. To be close to his true love, Pedro marries the eldest sister. Tita has a special relationship with Pedro through the meals she prepares. Her tears make the wedding cake ferment and that makes the guests cry. Her blood makes the chickens turn red and causes fierce passion among the eaters; for instance her sister runs naked and lustful into the arms of a cavalryman.Como agua is a visually refined epic story about passionate cooking and will undoubtedly be a new classic in the cinema of magic-realistic culinary eroticism.
