Based on Laura Esquivel's novel, the six-part drama centers on a young woman in 1910s Mexico who infuses her cooking with her own emotions.
Like a fine mole, magical realism requires incredible complexity to yield something that is then perceived as quite simple. Fifty different types of chilies become something broadly described as a chocolaty sauce. Sentiment, whimsy, romance, the supernatural and some measure of grounding combine into a mix that even your friendly neighborhood culture critic might only be able to say works or doesn’t.
As adapted by head writer Francisco Javier Royo Fernández , the series starts off very similarly to earlier iterations. We begin in the Mexican state of Coahuila with Elena giving birth to Tita in a deluge of tears, brought on by onions as well as by a misery that won’t be explained for a while. The peculiar thing is that this reveal comes at a moment when it’s wholly irrelevant. Sure, Tita has just made cream fritters for Pedro and they make him happy. But a person feeling glad to eat good food hardly seems probative of a magical manifestation. That snippet of narration could have been dropped anywhere in the series, and placing it here drains what ought to be a key scene of its sense of discovery.
Around the food, there’s some effort put into building out the world of 1910s Mexico, including the clash between landowners and their Indigenous serfs, the mounting public frustration with the administration of General Porfirio Díaz and the surging undercurrent of several converging revolutionary forces. This is all in the backdrop of the book, and it may be in the full director’s cut of Arau’s movie as well.
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