Quail in Rose Petals

Only have a couple of chapters left to go on my effort to reread One Hundred Years of Solitude for book club by the end of the month. Then, Mario Vargas Llosa goes and wins the Nobel Prize, first South American since Gabi and I decide I have to read him before the next get together as well. Checked out the availability of his books on the Internet catalog and saw that the main library downtown had a couple and walked there noon time on Friday. Alas, the ones I wanted were gone already, here with me thinking inner city borrowers were not likely to take out these novels despite the press. So I wandered over to the DVD section. For an affiliation of several libraries in two counties, each seems to have a wide berth in how it chooses to sort movie titles. At my library, everything is alphabetical by title, with only two small shelves dedicated to family night suitable viewing and staff favorites. At the main branch, all foreign made movies are sorted out separately. Strange though, they only stock the sleeves on the shelves and you have to get the actual disks at the check out counter. And you only get them for four days as contrasted to a week here in the suburbs.

So, I took out two foreign films: Like Water for Chocolate, in keeping with the Hispanic theme I have going, and Gabrielle, a French story set at the turn of the Century. First LWFC.

If I had a private stock of DVDs, I would add this to my make believe collection of favorite movies, right up there with Chocolat and Love in the Time of Cholera. Like the latter, this story is about first love. The story begins at a ranch in Mexico at the time of the last revolution. A woman gives birth to her third daughter, the daughter marked by tradition to remain an old maid, taking care of her into her old age. The father dies shortly after the birth of Tita when his friends tease him about not making sons and go to far telling him his second daughter is not his, thereafter succumbing to a heart attack. The girls live a quasi-idyllic life, except for the shrew that is their mother. When Tita is about sixteen, handsome Pedro falls in love with her. He is thwarted by Tita's mother who insists her fate as caretaker is sealed by tradition and Pedro marries the oldest sister only to be close to Tita.

Pedro is a cautious person who one day gives Tita a gorgeous bouquet of roses. Her mother grabs them from her and Tita uses them to make a feast worthy of Isabelle Allende's orgies: quail in rose petal sauce. All around the table, the family succumbs to the sensuality of a perfect sensory overload meal. The middle daughter, titillated enough to need a cold shower, runs off to join the guerrillas after they set fire to the bathhouse. Pedro and his wife and young son are banished to Texas. Life goes on, eventually Tita, like her counterpart in LITTOC, marries her physician. Decades later at the wedding of her niece, after the death of Pedro's wife, they become lovers, dying in the actual flames of their passion. Wow, what a story.

I've figured out that I love movies about unrequited love, love that lasts for years even through separations and "other lives." I also like stories where food is erotic. Chocolat fits that bill more so than other classics like Babette's Feast or that Italian movie where they make the huge timpani. Food and lavish table are showcased in Gabrielle, but this is a movie about the complete absence of passion.

Jean, a rich Parisian, married Gabrielle ten years previous to the start of the story. They live in a mansion in the City and entertain every Thursday, trying to create a salon of musicians, wits and other demimonde. The china, silver and food at their banquets are reminiscent of Scorsese's The Age of Innocence. However, their lives are all productions, stylized appearances where they both drift around the margins of their guests, not engaging in conversation be it gossipy or erudite. Jean comes home early the day after to find a note from Gabrielle that she has left him for another man. Within five hours, she returns home. The rest of the movie is a distanced conversation as Jean tries to intellectualize her motives and Gabrielle enhances her icy aloof facade to exact revenge. Neither character is admirable although the acting, costumes and scenery are superb.

What a contrast with LWFC. Gabrielle purposefully lives a life without love. Tita bids her time for one night of culminating passion. Maybe I should read Llosa's nonfiction study of Flaubert and Madame Bovary to rekindle a belief in Gallic passion to rival Latin devotion.