Like Water for Chocolate: The Series Captures the Magic of the Beloved Novel

Like water for chocolate by Laura Esquivel is a novel where cooking and passion come into communion. Perhaps that is why the series premiered on HBOMax on November 3. “It was a book written with a solid dramatic structure, as if I were going to write a play, or as if I were going to make a movie,” is what the author tells us. It tells us the story of Tita, a young woman whose destiny is to stay and take care of her mother. Dissatisfied with this, he decides to defy what tradition dictates to fight for the love of his life: Pedro.

The magical thing about this book is how Tita’s emotions mix with the ingredients of the dishes she prepares. For example, when the young woman makes the wedding cake for her sister Rosaura and Pedro, her sadness is so powerful that the guests run to patios, corrals and bathrooms longing for their true love. Even Nacha, the house cook, dies remembering an old boyfriend. This is how the kitchen becomes a large witch’s cauldron that produces dishes, similar to positions, capable of transmitting emotions. Fortunately in the series these transformations are seen with powerful images.

In contrast to Tita, Rosaura is a woman who since she was a child does not care about cooking, this causes her to gain weight and get sick. Thus, food becomes a poison when it is delegated to others. Even more, Rosaura leaves her life in the hands of what society dictates, without even asking herself if she should do something or not. That is why despite having the possibility of getting married, he is not happy. Her lack of determination makes way for her mother to decide for her.

The series, like the book, also breaks the cliché of the mother figure as someone good and loving. Mama Elena is a dominant and rigid woman. “It was really difficult to hold Mama Elena’s gaze, even for a captain. There was something that scared her. The effect it had on those who received it was one of indescribable fear; They felt at a crossroads and sentenced for crimes committed. “One fell prey to a childish fear of maternal authority.” Mama Elena’s personality seeks to keep tradition, in order to maintain the good customs of that time.

At this point I would not judge anyone who felt that Mama Elena resembles the fearsome Medusa, as Jeanine Lino would say, “a terrible mother who thinks that duty is more important than love.” However, let’s try to understand her a little by traveling to her past. A long time ago, when Mom Elena was young, she fell deeply in love with a mulatto whom she could never marry because her parents decided so. Let us remember the deep racism that existed during that time before the Revolution, which was capable of sending any family to ruin.

If the story was set during the years of the Revolution, it is possible to ask what is revolutionary about this novel? A challenge for the series and for the book. The quick answer is: the kitchen. In this place, which for Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo was a place of transformations, Tita experiences a series of emotions that lead her to make certain decisions that gradually break with the condemnation imposed by tradition.

At first Tita does not know what her destiny is and she cooks quietly, until she meets Pedro and her mother reveals that she cannot get married, later she lets herself be carried away by the attraction towards Pedro, who disappoints her the moment he contracts. She marries her sister, at some point she falls out of love with Pedro and decides to marry John, finally dying next to her lover during a fire.

Facts more, facts less are all narrated while a recipe is written and we hope to consign the series. You can do it because the novel is a rich source of images. The kitchen becomes a space of deconstruction. Sor Juana was right when she wrote “If Aristotle had cooked, he would have written much more.”

In addition to this, Tita’s food changes those she feeds, by transmitting her passions to others, she makes them experience the world through her eyes. And that transforms them. Perhaps the most graphic moment of this occurs when Tita serves the quail in rose petals. “On the other hand, something strange happened to Gertrudis…She began to sweat and imagine what it would feel like to be sitting on a horse’s back, hugged by a Villista, one of those she had seen a week before entering the town square, smelling of sweat. , to land, to dawns of danger and uncertainty, to life and death.” Although it would be great to refer to this entire episode that is in the series, space does not allow it. But it is necessary to add the following, after this exciting description, at the end of the chapter Gertrude does flee from the house. A
The success of the series is precisely that Tita’s recipes provoke an immediate response in those willing to let themselves be carried away by their emotions.

I learned to write with word search. While my mother was preparing the collection with tomato, onion and garlic, she told me: “Honey, write railroad.” I took those tiny letters and searched letter by letter until I formed a word. Sometimes I confused the “C” with the “G,” other times I forgot that some words had a double “r.” And although years have passed of this, every time I eat word search I remember the wooden table where I wrote my mother’s dictations. And on more than one occasion I have written some of my works and articles in the kitchen, perhaps Sor Juana was right.

I do not doubt that the series is a success because Laura Esquivel, as she herself says, gave “a voice to many women whose work was never recognized by anyone, who spend their lives cooking for others, giving of themselves to others and no one even turns to look at them.” ”. The series was recorded in two haciendas in Tlaxcala built in the 17th century and in Mexico City. Salma Hayek is one of the executive producers. And some of the actors who appear are: Azul Guaita as Tita, Irene Azuela as mother Elena, Andrés Baida as Pedro, Ana Valeria Becerril as Rosaura, Ángeles Cruz as Nacha and Andrea Chaparro as Gertrudis. In addition to this series, there were other adaptations as a film in 1992 directed by Alfonso Arau and it premiered as a ballet in New York in 2023.