Woman on Top starts out kind of promising, although the food = sex thing is getting a little shopworn lately. It had a foreign feel to it, and I watched it with the Spanish subtitles on so I could try to brush up on my Spanish at the same time.
It soon lost all interest and was amazingly tedious for such a short film (I think it was about 80 minutes or something). The basic plot is Cruz has severe motion sickness and needs to be in control of her movements at all time--including sex. She's one helluva cook though.
Her male partner puts up with her needing to be on top for a couple of years (they both love each other with a hot chili pepper kind of passion), but then gets caught screwing around. Exit Penelope to America (LA, IIRC). The rest of the film is about boyfriend trying to retrieve Penelope, who gets a cooking show that all the men are watching because of the way she slices and dices.
You can likely fill in the rest of the story and the outcome yourself. Will the TV show have a male producer who is also after Penelope? Will the two lovers be reunited and all be right with the world at the end? Will Penelope overcome her motion sickness, and/or will her lover come to appreciate her for who she is?
One last comment re Woman on Top: does anyone else see the following pattern in male-female foils?
A male foil (the buddy, or whatever) will usually be more normal and gray than the male lead. His head will be on better, but he'll also be kind of drab--grounded.
A female foil (the buddy, or whatever) will usually be whacked out more than the female lead. She'll have bizarre clothes or hairstyle or lifestyle. Aside from knowing how to advise the heroine, her own life will be in even worse shape.
In Woman on Top, Penelope Cruz's best friend/foil is a black transvestite. Based on movies and TV, I'm beginning to think all single women are advised by some combination of lesbian transvestite drug addict, who is usually black.
