WOMAN ON TOP

by Tom Meek

With a title like Woman on Top, you might expect the feminism to be a little compromised by smarm. Fortunately, Venezuelan director Finas Torres adds a dash of charm to the smarm and serves up as the main ingredient the spicy and succulent Penelope Cruz as her hotblooded heroine, Isabella. And the film is as much about culinary art as sexual positions. Isabella is a young Brazilian woman cursed with a drastic form of motion sickness that makes it impossible for her to ride in any vehicle she is not driving, whether that be an elevator, a cab, or her macho husband, Toninho (Murilo Benício). To compensate for this malady, the gods have given her an unsurpassed gift for cooking, which lands her in the kitchen of Toninho's vastly successful restaurant, where she does all the work and gets none of the credit. When she discovers Toninho on top of another woman, Isabella calls it quits, moves to San Francisco to live with her drag-queen friend Monica (Harold Perrineau Jr.), and eventually winds up starring on her own hit cooking show. Oh, and did I mention the gods? As if all these flaky characters and unlikely plot twists weren't enough, Torres tosses in a healthy dollop of black magic, polytheistic mumbo-jumbo, and magical realism. The finished dish is overstocked and half-baked, an attempt to imitate Pedro Almodóvar or Like Water for Chocolate that falls as flat as a pancake.