Not many movies can get away with “Once upon a time...” opening narration. This thoroughly modern fable about “love, motion sickness, and the art of cooking” makes it work like a literal charm.
Penelope Cruz, from the Oscar-winning Spanish film All About My Mother and Billy Bob Thornton’s upcoming postwar Western All the Pretty Horses, plays Isabella, who, while growing up in the coastal Brazilian state of Bahia, was a frail, gangly child. She matures to earn renown as both a winsome beauty and a remarkable chef. Courted by Toninho (Brazilian film and TV star Murilo Benicio), a dashing local singer and restaurateur, she marries him and takes over his kitchen, making the business not only a profitable cultural icon but a staple of the seaside economy. The only fly in the gazpacho is Isabella’s curious aversion to any physical movement beyond her control; she can’t ride on a bike or in a car unless she does the steering, and during sex she must...well, read the title and figure it out yourself.
There idyll is wrecked when Toninho’s deep-seated cultural aversion to, umm, being consigned to the passenger’s seat sends him elsewhere for a chance to drive -- if you catch the drift. That, and Isabella has come to feel stifled in the confines of his kitchen, so she leaves. Taking a long, nauseating flight to San Francisco, she moves in with her expatriate childhood friend, now a drag amazon, Monica (“Oz” inmate and The Best Man costar Harold Perrineau). With help from a Santeria incantation, Isabella escapes Toni’s spell and finds fame when a TV producer (Mark Feuerstein -- Rules of Engagement) gets wind of her sauce – so to speak – and facilitates stardom by creating a hit live cooking show called “Passion Food.”
Contrite at having lost her, not to mention suffering financially in absence of a chef, Toninho heads north with his Greek chorus of guitarists in tow, only to find Isabella successful and happily independent. He and the band wind up on “Passion Food” too, adding a big helping of chemistry, mood music, and plot. Everything climaxes in a “love versus voodoo” confrontation of near-Biblical proportions.
Woman on Top is the sort of thing that an American filmmaker, especially a guy, couldn’t have managed without wallowing in the usual Hollywood cheekiness and innuendo. Instead, the distaff pair of award-winning Venezuelan director Fina Torres and Brazilian-born screenwriter Vera Blasi (whose next food-related tale, Tortilla Soup, starring Hector Elizondo, Elizabeth Peña, and Raquel Welch is due in a few months) have managed a sweet, funny, romantic little film that never feels forced or contrived (similar in feel to, but better than, this year’s other kitchen & music romance, Sarah Michelle Gellar’s underappreciated Simply Irresistible). The provocative title is its most explicit feature despite an atmosphere positively dripping with sensuality. Not that Penelope Cruz isn’t gorgeous; she has a genuine, magical beauty painfully absent in most Cosmo covergirl actresses and cookie-cutter supermodel types. Throw in a refreshing soundtrack loaded with samba and bossa nova, and you’ve got the first surprise of the fall movie season. B+
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