Everyone touts Como agua para chocolate as an example of Magical Realism, but when one watches the film without having read the book, the food episodes could easily be interpreted more literally, with various chemical substances being added to the cuisine to affect people in various ways...
It is also easy to find fault with nearly all of the characters, even the romantic hero and heroine, given the harm they themselves do to other people (the American doctor, the sister) out of what is supposed to be their all-consuming love for one another. If the mother is so horrifying, why not just elope and start a new life?
Some may take issue with the crazy idea that the youngest daughter should be forced to renounce any marriage prospect on the grounds that she must care for her mother in her old age. But an honest look at history reveals that, in fact, all women were doomed until only relatively recently to serve as the possessions of their husbands and the source of their children. For millennia, women were not permitted to achieve literacy because their destinies had supposedly been sorted out already. Given history, then, I don´t think that the principle forbidding the young lovers from being together in Como agua para chocolate is so far out of the realm of possibility as some reviewers do.
This is a fairytale about absolute, eternal, unremitting love between two people. Do you believe in love? Then you might enjoy this film. It is certainly thought provoking and entertaining.
It is also easy to find fault with nearly all of the characters, even the romantic hero and heroine, given the harm they themselves do to other people (the American doctor, the sister) out of what is supposed to be their all-consuming love for one another. If the mother is so horrifying, why not just elope and start a new life?
Some may take issue with the crazy idea that the youngest daughter should be forced to renounce any marriage prospect on the grounds that she must care for her mother in her old age. But an honest look at history reveals that, in fact, all women were doomed until only relatively recently to serve as the possessions of their husbands and the source of their children. For millennia, women were not permitted to achieve literacy because their destinies had supposedly been sorted out already. Given history, then, I don´t think that the principle forbidding the young lovers from being together in Como agua para chocolate is so far out of the realm of possibility as some reviewers do.
This is a fairytale about absolute, eternal, unremitting love between two people. Do you believe in love? Then you might enjoy this film. It is certainly thought provoking and entertaining.