Tortilla Soup

Raquel Welch, Hector Elizondo. A master chef meets a new love while his three grown daughters learn to cope. Based on Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman . 2001/color/103 min/NR.

The tantalizing genre of food films--stretching from Babette's Feast to Big Night and beyond--has a delicious new addition, Tortilla Soup. The food-preparation scenes will make your mouth water. Fortunately, the rest of the movie holds up as well. Hector Elizondo plays Martin, a widowed chef who is losing both his sense of taste and control over his three daughters: Leticia (the always superb Elizabeth Peña), a religious schoolteacher; Carmen (Jacqueline Obradors), a successful but unhappy businesswoman still carrying on an affair with her ex-boyfriend; and Maribel (Tamara Mello), a rebellious teen falling in love with a young Brazilian. When a pushy, nosy, but very sexy widow named Hortensia (Raquel Welch) comes along, the troublesome subcurrents in the family start to surface. Elizondo's understated gravitas anchors the story, while the three sisters have sex, eat amazing-looking food, and break plates in the kitchen. --Bret Fetzer