October 28, 1997

Movie Reviews

The Cadre 15

*Foreign Film Review* By David MacDonald

Since this is the first entry in this column, let me start off by giving one piece of important advice: do not watch any foreign film dubbed into English. Atleast if you don’t want a chuckle or two, which was what I succumbed to when I watched the English version of Like Water for Chocolate.

Dubbing is always a problem. We hear voices from the actors, who probably cannot get any work in the business except as translators, who give embarrassingly bad perform- ances, mostly because they try (and fail) to time themselves with the mouths of the real actors speaking in Spanish. For example, the servant girl of the Mexican family which is the centre of the film sounds (in English) in complete hysterics while at the same time wanting desperately to finish her sentences so she (the person doing the dubbing, that is) can have her lunch break.

It doesn’t help that the story is completely fanciful and unbelievable. The story involves a woman who because she is the youngest is forced to care for her aging mother instead of marrying the man she loves (hey, the setting is more than a hundred years ago, so we can get away with this.) Somehow, her emotionsmanifest themselves in her cooking. For exam- ple, during a wedding taking place a while later, her tears are shed into the food, making the dinner guests become very heartsick (and physically sick, too!). Other such events are created involving her and food throughout the story, and of course, our heroine gets who she has wanted by the end of the sto

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I did see this film in the original subtitling before, and that was a tolerable experience. But the dubbed version proves that plot alone does not make a great film. Sometimes you’ve got to know howto recite dialogue. But then you wou Idn’t get any unexpected laughs that way. Rating: **1/2 (of four)

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