Like Water for Chocolate(1992)

Submitted by Julio M

(Como Agua Para Chocolate)

Short pooper:
Rosaura (Yareli Arizmendi) dies of a stomach illness. Tita (Lumi Cavazos) and Pedro (Marco Leonardi), while finally celebrating their love, both also die; Pedro, of a heart attack and Tita, from consuming a bunch of matches, which sets off a fire that quickly engulfs the whole ranch property. The narrator of the whole (Arcelia Ramirez) turns out to be Esperanza’s own daughter, who ended up inheriting Tita’s precious cookbook when it was rescued from the fire by her mother and passed down to her.

Longer version:
Upon the return of Gertrudis (Claudette Maillé) -who ended up marrying Revolutionary soldier Juan (Rodolfo Arias), shortly after the incident in which she spontaneously ran off with him- and having the bulk of the family gathered in a collective celebration, Tita starts being haunted by the spiteful spirit of her deceased mother Elena (Regina Torné), who mocks and chastises her for “her sin” -of sleeping with Pedro behind Rosaura’s back-.

Things further complicate when Tita suspects becoming pregnant and confides in Gertrudis about it; Gertrudis advises her to just simply tell Pedro and not care about what Rosaura might think, since it was no secret that, despite Pedro having always been in love with Tita, Elena -because of the tradition of “the youngest daughter staying single to take care of the mother until her death”- did not allow them to be together, so he married Rosaura instead. Elena’s haunting happens repeatedly until, one night, fed up, Tita stands up to her mother’s ghost, confronts her about her hypocrisy and her own adulterous affair -which, it is heavily implied, resulted in Tita being born- and disowns and banishes her forever. Elena is taken aback and disappears to never return, but, at the same time, disrupts an outside gathering where Pedro and Juan are singing by a bonfire, causing the fire to flare up and burn Pedro; he, however, survives and is tended to by Dr. Brown (Mario Iván Martínez).

Pedro, still feeling jealous of Tita’s engagement to Brown, scolds her for it and tries to coerce her to break it off or he will tell Brown about her pregnancy, to which she retorts it was just a false alarm, much to his dismay. She does, nonetheless, tell Brown everything, which saddens him but he forgives her anyway and shows himself open to whatever decision she wants to make at that point -either staying with him, or breaking it off and returning to Pedro-.

Eventually, Rosaura angrily confronts Tita about Pedro. When Tita justifies her actions, Rosaura forbids her from being near her own daughter Esperanza, threatens to throw her off the property if she keeps it up and reiterates that Esperanza is to follow the same family tradition Tita had bestowed upon herself, to which she quips, while looking at Esperanza, that she will do everything in her power from freeing her from that dreadful tradition.

Time passes. Eventually, Brown and Tita’s relationship falls apart, they separate and he returns to the United States. A grown-up Esperanza (Sandra Arau) ends up marrying Brown’s son. It is revealed that this happened because Tita, determined to turn tradition upside down, stuck around and fought for Esperanza’s right to decide for her own life, which was not very difficult since, one day, Pedro found Rosaura dead of the same crippling gastrointestinal issue that had weakened her over the years and caused her to be flatulent all the time, thus relieving Esperanza from following the tradition. At the same time, Tita and Pedro would finally be free to pursue the love they were barred from.

After a showy wedding reception where guests are treated to Tita’s delicious, sensual cooking and, as a result, many sneak off to be intimate with each other, Pedro and Tita themselves go off to the guest house to consummate their marriage. Unfortunately, while making passionate love, Pedro suffers a fatal heart attack, which devastates Tita. Remembering the myth Brown had told her about, years before, Tita, overcome by grief, commits suicide by grabbing a case of matches and swallowing them all compulsively, which, in the spur of that passionate moment, causes her body to light up on a fire that spreads quickly and burns the whole ranch to the ground.

The movie ends showing who the narrator of the whole story was: Esperanza’s daughter, also the niece Tita fought so hard for. She reveals that, when her mother returned from her honeymoon and found the ranch reduced to ashes, she managed to scavenge out Tita’s cookbook, virtually intact, and then treasured it and eventually passed it down to her, thus getting a new tradition in motion. Also, the spirits of Esperanza and Tita are seen smiling behind her, thus showing how the love and care of both women would always manifest in her.