Why the Movie, Like Water for Chocolate, Leaves a Bad Taste in My Mouth

Like Water for Chocolate is about a selfish, narcissistic woman who stubbornly clings to an infatuation with her sister's husband even as it results in family tragedies.

Tita is the youngest of three sisters, the oldest of which dutifully marries the man their mother chooses for her, Pedro, whom Tita girlishly pines for. Tita is understandably upset as any teenager would be when her crush doesn't work out, but she does not grow out of it. Ever. Until the day she dies.

On the day of Pedro and the oldest sister's marriage, Pedro dances with Tita, and soulfully tells her that he only married her sister to be close to Tita, because Tita is the one he *really* loves. (Barf.) Tita, who apparently suffers from no feelings of sisterly loyalty, smiles triumphantly to hear this.

The best part of the movie (one that is quickly overshadowed by Tita's tiresome brattiness), is that Tita has some magical abilities when it comes to cooking. Of course she uses these to ambush what happiness the newlyweds might have--she poisons the wedding cake with her tears, causing everyone at the wedding to feel wretched with grief. Everyone but Tita has to abruptly leave their tables to vomit in a nearby river.

Time passes and the sister and Pedro have a child. Good old Tita sets out to steal the affections of the baby away from its mother, and with the help of her witchy abilities, succeeds. Tita's mother, who sees what is happening and rightfully suspects that Tita is set on sabotaging her sister's marriage, sends away the sister and Pedro in the hopes that they will be safer far away from Tita's influence. This tactic unfortunately backfires. The baby, whom Tita endowed with a dependency to her own milk, dies.

Tita wants to use this event as an excuse to go see the grieving parents (and break apart their marriage), but her mother sees through her and insists that there is too much work to be done at home to spare a trip. Tita, who knows how badly her mother wants and needs her help around the house, decides that she will stop being useful. She goes to the pigeon house and refuses to come out; she childishly refuses to even speak to anyone.

It isn't until she is sent to a doctor in Texas where she does not have to do any chores, or anything at all, that Tita deigns to speak. Of course, just as her mother feared, things fall apart without the extra hand. Bandits come to the house, rape a serving girl, and kill Tita's mother when she valiantly tries to defend the girl.

Now that her mother is out of the way, Tita goes home on the arm of the doctor. He is a good man, though it's hard not be be when Pedro, the lech who can't settle for one sister, is your only comparison.

But when Tita's sister and the lech that married her arrive back at the house, Tita forgets all about her promise to marry the doctor. Her sister and Pedro have had another child by this time, a birth that debilitates the sister and results in her never being able to have another child. Tita, at this point, could grow up, give up her infatuation, and make amends with her remaining family by using her abilities to heal her sister. Instead Tita slowly poisons the poor woman with indigestible foods while screwing her husband.

The affair results in a pregnancy, one Tita terminates after she realizes she can't use it to wrangle Pedro away from her sister. Tita flaunts her affair in the doctor's face and they do not get married.

Decades later, after her sister dies from Tita's vengeful cuisine, nothing stands between Tita and Pedro. But in a karmic twist of fate, Pedro dies in the throes of passion, and Tita burns down the barn in her blind grief, thankfully with herself in it. The end.

Okay, to be completely honest, the way I just summed them up is not exactly the way the movie presented those same events. Tita is actually portrayed as the heroine, a sort of Mexican Cinderella. It's a choice that befuddles me, considering that Tita is clearly--to me at least--evil sorceress material. In fact, the film would have been vastly improved had it portrayed Tita as an anti-hero, an unapologetic adulteress with no limit to the depths of cruelty she would plunge to in order to have her way. I might at least have respected Tita then, instead of rolling my eyes at the oblivious way she ruined the lives of all those around her.

Instead I had to gag as the filmmakers tried to force feed me into believing that a woman performing Tita's actions could actually be a good person, and that Pedro might be a man worth sacrificing the rest of her family for. I'm curious to know whether the book is also this way, or whether it is more sly, more subtle with the character portrayals and their positions on the scale of good and evil.

I only liked a handful of people in this movie, and they had woefully little screen time. There is an old serving woman, charming and lovable, but she dies almost immediately. The middle sister is a strong, wonderfully wanton woman--she is off operating bordellos and leading revolutions during most of the movie. Chencha, the young serving woman is high-spirited: she plays a laughing counterpart to Tita's moping. But after Chencha gets raped to serve the plot, the filmmakers feel no need to acknowledge the aftermath of her traumatic experience. No, really, nothing. The next time we see her she is smiling in her jolly way, and as far as I can see, there is no hint of the depressed buffoon to her whatsoever.

I was so outraged by the portrayal of Tita as the hero in this movie, that I had to write an article about it. If you've made it this far into my rant and you've seen the movie, please comment and let me know what you thought of Tita, especially if you actually liked her. Someone, please tell me why, why and how anyone could sympathize with this selfish woman. My mind boggles.