But there is a method to Pedro’s treachery. During a dance at the wedding, he whispers into Tita’s ear that he has actually married Rosaura in order to be always close to Tita. He still loves only her. Weeping with sadness and joy, Tita prepares the wedding cake, and as her tears mingle with the granulated sugar, sifted cake flour, beaten eggs, and grated peel of lime, they transform the cake into something enchanting that causes all of the guests at the feast to begin weeping at what should be an occasion for joy.
The movie is narrated by Tita’s greatniece, who describes how, through the years, Aunt Tita’s kitchen produces even more extraordinary miracles. When Pedro gives her a dozen red roses, for example, she prepares them with quail and honey, and the recipe is such an aphrodisiac that everyone at the table is aroused, and smoke actually pours from the ears of the middle sister, Gertrudis. She races to the outhouse, which catches fire, and then, tearing off her burning clothes, is swept into the saddle of a passing bandolero. (She returns many years later, a famous revolutionary leader.)
Like Water for Chocolate is based on a bestselling novel by Laura Esquivel, and has been directed by her husband, Alfonso Arau. Like Bye Bye Brazil and parts of El Norte, it continues the tradition of magical realism that is central to modern Latin film and literature. It begins with the assumption that magic can change the fabric of the real world, if it is transmitted through the emotions of people in love. And Lumi Cavazos, as Tita, is the perfect instrument for magic, with her single-minded, lifelong devotion to Pedro—a love that transcends even their separation, when the evil Mama Elena dispatches Pedro and Rosaura to another town, where their baby dies for lack of Tita’s cooking.
The movie takes the form of an old family legend, and the source is apparently Esquivel. It gains the poignancy of an old story that is already over, so that the romance takes on a kind of grandeur. What has survived, however, is a tattered but beautiful old book containing all of Aunt Tita’s recipes, and who has not felt some sort of connection with the past when reading or preparing a favorite recipe from a loved one who has now passed on?
Imagine, for example, melting some butter and browning two cloves of garlic in it. Then adding two drops of attar of roses, the petals of six roses, two tablespoons of honey, and twelve thinly sliced chestnuts to the mixture, and rubbing it all over six tiny quail and browning them in the oven. Serve, of course, with the remaining rose petals. And stand back.
Minnie and Moskowitz
PG, 114 m., 1971
Gena Rowlands (Minnie), Seymour Cassel (Moskowitz), Val Avery (Zelmo Swift), Tim Carey (Morgan Morgan), Katherine Cassavetes (Sheba Moskowitz), Lady Rowlands (Georgia Moore), Elsie Ames (Florence), David Rowlands (Minister). Directed by John Cassavetes and produced by Paul Donelly and Al Ruben. Screenplay by John Cassavetes.
Minnie works in a museum and has never forgiven the movies for selling her a bill of goods. “The movies lead you on,” she tells her friend Florence. “They make you believe in romance and love . . . and, Florence, there just aren’t any Clark Gables, not in the real world.” Still, Minnie dreams and keeps a romantic secret locked in her heart: She’s glad the movies sold her that bill of goods.
Seymour is a car-hiker. He has a magnificent mustache, shoulder-length hair, and very little else to show for his life so far. “An Albert Einstein he’s not,” his mother exclaims. “Pretty he’s not. Look at that face. A future he doesn’t have; he parks cars for a living.”
And yet, and yet . . . love blossoms somehow between Minnie Moore and Seymour Moskowitz, during four crazy days and nights. Seymour thinks he might be able to improve his position, get a job in a larger garage, maybe. Minnie shakes her head and sighs when she looks at him: “Seymour, look at that face. It’s not the face I dreamed of, Seymour.”
Consumed by love, Seymour bangs his fist against the roof of his pickup truck: “Minnie, oh, Minnie! Oh, Minnie!” Seymour is not very articulate. He talks about only three things, Minnie says: money, eating, and cars. “Cars are very important to Seymour,” Minnie explains to her mother. Her mother nods, a little stunned. “Seymour cares about cars.”
And all of this is why love scores an altogether unreasonable triumph over common sense in Minnie and Moskowitz, a comedy by John Cassavetes. The movie is sort of a fairy tale, Cassavetes says; it’s dedicated to all the people who didn’t marry the person they should have. It is a movie on the side of love, and it is one of the finest movies of the year.
Cassavetes has always been an interesting director, with an inspired unpredictability to his work. He likes to get the texture of real life in his films, and when his experiments succeed they produce brilliant work, such as Faces, which I thought was the best film of 1968. When they don’t work, we get embarrassingly disconnected and obscurely personal work, such as Husbands, which was maybe the most overrated film of 1971.
Minnie and Moskowitz isn’t much like anything Cassavetes has done before, except in its determination to go all the way with actors’ performances—even at the cost of the movie’s overall form. Cassavetes, an actor himself, is one of the few American directors who really is sympathetic with actors. He lets them go, lets them try new things and take risks. This can lead to terribly indulgent performances, as it did in Husbands. But in Minnie and Moskowitz it gives us performances by Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel that are so beautiful you can hardly believe it.
Rowlands is a lovely, warm actress with a speaking voice that’s round and interesting, and not as detached as most performers’ voices. Cassel is one of the few actors who can let everything inside hang out, because he’s got the stuff inside. A lot of actors throw aside caution and reveal their innermost being, only to raise the curtain on a void. Cassel makes Moskowitz into a convincing, dedicated, pure crazy romantic, and that’s why, even in dreary 1971, we can believe he could sweep Minnie off her feet.
Rowlands (who is Mrs. Cassavetes) played the prostitute in Faces, and Cassel got an Academy Award nomination for his performance as the hippie in that movie. There are a lot of other members of the Cassavetes circle in Minnie and Moskowitz: Cassavetes’s mother plays Moskowitz’s mother, Rowland’s mother plays Minnie’s mother, Rowland’s father has a cameo as a minister, various children and family friends have walk-ons, and Cassavetes himself turns up, unbilled, as Minnie’s loveless lover.
This kind of casting can’t help but give the movie an intimate, familiar feeling, and maybe that’s why the comedy works as human comedy and not just manufactured laughs. The casting also turns up the funniest mother performance of the year, by Katherine Cassavetes, who is sort of a cross between Ruth Gordon and Mrs. Portnoy and should get several acting offers after this. “Look at my son,” she says. “He’s a bum. Where will they sleep? What food will they eat? Money will they make?” Yes, but who cares? Not Minnie, not Moskowitz, not love.
Moonstruck
PG, 102 m., 1987
Cher (Loretta Castorini), Nicolas Cage (Ronny Cammareri), Victor Gardenia (Cosmo Castorini), Olympia Dukakis (Rose Castorini). Directed by Norman Jewison and produced by Jewison and Patrick Palmer. Screenplay by John Patrick Shanley.