By PETER CALDER
(Herald rating: * * )
Sweet and spicy at times, the new film by the Venezuelan director of Celestial Clockwork ends up tasting bland because the ingredients are so carelessly measured.
There's no sign of the delicate touch which, the title character tells us, is the secret of great cuisine.
Isabella
(Cruz) is the chef at a beachside bar in her native north-east Brazil, packing in the punters with her superb cooking while her husband Toninho (Benicio) flirts and croons out front.
Her susceptibility to motion sickness dominates her life: she avoids lifts, can travel by car only if she drives, and has to be on top in bed.
This last quirk seems to have no dramatic function. It certainly never justifies the title and doesn't even work as a running gag.
But it sends her macho husband into the neighbour's arms, and Isabella braves a flight to visit a drag-queen friend (Perrineau, the electrifying Mercutio in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet) in California, where she becomes a star on a TV cooking show.
What promises to be the story of a newly-single battler finding herself quickly backtracks when Toninho hits town (his bar's gone bust in Isabella's absence but he seems to have no trouble travelling with a serenade combo in tow), looking more like a stalker than a contrite lover.
Meanwhile, Isabella's head is turned by a TV producer who is patently a jerk.
The film lends food none of the sexy allure of Like Water For Chocolate, say, resorting instead to rather jarring moments of magical realism - a technique which should now be banned by international treaty.
Cruz, who stars in gossip columns with a man called Cruise, is an accomplished actress in her native Spanish (she was wonderful for Almodovar in All About My Mother), but working in English she seems faltering and unsure, never on top at all.
And by film's end, for all her talent and winsome charm, Isabella looks like just another bimbo who ended up on the bottom.
Cast: Penelope Cruz, Harold Perrineau jun, Murilo Benicio, Mark Feurerstein
Director: Fina Torres
Running time: 85 mins
Rating: M
Screening: Village and Rialto
