Food, Feelings and Film

Abstract

This paper uses the Mexican film Like Water for Chocolate (1991) to address the question of how women can use food as a path to power. Directed by Alfonso Arau based on his wife Laura Esquivel's screenplay, the film uses lush and sensual images of foods and cooking to articulate a rich picture of family and gender. By portraying several characters' relationship to food, and through food to each other, the film suggests multiple ways women can carve out diversely empowering or demeaning roles.