You've got to wonder about a film that pitches food as the star. Not that the dishes, prepared by the "Too Hot Tamales" Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, fall short of expectations. Tortilla Soup is rife with cooking and dinner scenes that feature both classic Mexican and Mexican fusion dishes. But nobody eats film, so the magnitude of the food's presence distracts from the story line. Or maybe it's the story line that distracts from the story line.
Lying beneath it all is a story about a family of Mexican Americans and their abruptly changing lives. Hector Elizondo, most recognized for his role in Chicago Hope, plays Martin Naranjo, a semi-retired chef and the father of three young women. Every Sunday his daughters are required to join him for a grand meal that he spends the day preparing. His eldest daughter, Leticia (Elizabeth Pena), is a devout Christian and schoolteacher. She's the daddy's girl of the three sisters. The middle child, Carmen (Jacqueline Obradors), is a successful executive, with an eccentric style of cooking that aggravates her father. The youngest daughter, Maribel (Tamara Mello of She's All That), is a fun-loving high school student longing to see the world.
All at once, Leticia begins to receive love letters, Carmen gets offered a job in Barcelona, and Maribel runs off with her new boyfriend. Nothing is as it was. People begin to miss Sunday dinner, frustrating Martin whose taste is dead and health may be failing in the process. Martin decides to fill his newfound free time by courting the mother of a family friend. Hortensia (Raquel Welch) seeks Martin as her fourth husband.
The extensive dining scenes segue into the major dialogues of the film. Cooking scenes battle the discussions for time on-screen.
But despite the prominent role of food, the music turns out to be the hidden star of Tortilla Soup. It is light Latino fare, showcasing "Si En Un Final" by Eliades Ochoa of the Buena Vista Social Club and a Spanglish version of "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" by Lila Downs. It's a warm, fuzzy moment when the girls sing together during post-dinner kitchen duty. That's what sisterhood is all about: love, support, and cleaning.
Everything seems to work out for the characters. Without giving anything away, the film's conclusion involves both "living happily" and "forever after." The film's lone plot twist can be attributed only to the lack of support throughout the film. The cast, despite much talent, fails to perk up dialogue that teeters on the edge of cheesy. In one scene, Leticia and Carmen discuss their father's disdain for Christianity. Martin, a Catholic, feels that Christians worship Christ, rather than Christianity as a whole. Carmen mentions that Christ was a Christian, and both girls are surprised when the hairdresser reminds them that Christ was a Jew. Wouldn't the "devout" Leticia have known that?
One of the more tactfully placed cultural snippets is the persistent use of Spanglish, the Spanish/English hybrid that Martin shuns. His demands for either English or Spanish to be spoken in his household serves the character well, reinforcing the juxtaposition of Martin's loyalty to tradition and the Americanization of his daughters. A great deal of Tortilla Soup tries to enrich the audience with factual knowledge about Hispanic culture and religion, but most of it is presented so conspicuously as to appear forced and excessive.
The film's saving grace is the relationships between the characters. While the characterizations are peppered with stereotyping, the Naranjo family and its friends blend together nicely. Through thick and thin, sisters are sisters, and they offer each other unwavering support. Their father, who struggles with his own faults, seeks to find the line between helping and suffocating his children. As his family changes, so must he, and for a man obsessed with tradition, change comes slowly. Martin is aided through this transition by the hand of a young girl, a friend's daughter, to whom he brings a home-cooked lunch everyday at her school. The young girl quells Martin's empty nest syndrome and plays a roll in the film's surprise ending.
It's difficult to say for whom Tortilla Soup was written. Despite its sexual content, the movie is still really a matinee family film. Or maybe you can catch it in the afternoon before having a nice sociable dinner. Then again, the food in the film looks so good, dinner will probably be a disappointment.
