Woman On Top movie review & film summary (2000)

This drives Toninho crazy, and she catches him with another woman. "I'm a man!" he cries. "I have to be on top sometimes !" But in a rage she flies off to San Francisco and moves in with her best friend, Monica Jones, who is a transvestite played by Perrineau in a performance both funny and endearing. "Monica Jones" doesn't sound like the name of someone who grew up in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, but then this is one of those multinational movies where the ethnic flavor is suggested by speaking English with an accent.

Isabella's cooking soon wins her a show on local TV, with Monica as her sidekick, and Cruz is bewitching as she demonstrates how to inhale the soul of the pepper, and how to teach your fingers to salt without thinking. Cruz is bewitching all through the movie, but her beauty and charm have to pull a heavy train of cliches and inevitable developments--as when the national network execs want her to "look less ethnic," use Tabasco instead of real peppers, wear a low-cut dress, work under brighter lights and "lose the freak" (Monica). Her American producer and would-be boyfriend (Mark Feuerstein) loves her cooking but sides with the suits, and what happens next will be predictable for all but those seeing their first motion picture.

Cruz is a Spanish star who was recently electrifying in Pedro Almodovar's "All About My Mother," and was indescribably sexy and funny in "Jamon, Jamon" (1992), which translates as "Ham, Ham" and which you should put at the top of the list of films you really should have seen. "Woman on Top" wants to combine the sexual freedom of Almodovar with the magical realism of "Like Water for Chocolate," but succeeds in doing for its sources what the TV execs want to do to Isabella: Going for the broad and dull commercial approach instead of the wicked inside curve.