Woman on Top

In Woman on Top, Penelope Cruz plays Isabella, a happily married Brazilian woman who works as a chef in her husband Toninho's restaurant. Isabella has a terrible problem with motion-sickness, and as a result she can't do a lot of the things we take for granted. If she travels by car, she must drive. If she dances, she must lead, and in bed she must be on top - hence the title. Isabella is an expert chef, and loves cooking as much as she loves her husband. She has learned to cook so well because as a child, her motion-sickness meant that she couldn't play normally with other kids, so she spent most of her time in the kitchen. One night, Isabella catches Toninho in bed with another woman, and she leaves him. She goes to San Francisco where she moves in with her best friend Monica, a gay black transvestite. She tries to get a job as a chef, but can't find one, so she gets a job as a cooking teacher. This is the part of the film I liked best. Isabella really loves food and cooking, and the way she describes her passion for chilli peppers is wonderful. Unfortunately it's inter-cut with images of her making love with Toninho.

Isabella must be the most beautiful woman in San Francisco, because pretty soon she has the whole city walking around behind her, and her cooking course is a huge success. One of the guys slobbering after her is a TV producer, and through him she lands her own TV show. The rest of the story involves the show becoming more and more of a success, Isabella becoming more and more miserable, and her idiot husband chasing around behind her singing all the time. In fact, he's the most annoying element in the film. He's embarrassing and stupid, and he doesn't seem to go anywhere without a bunch of guitarists. He even manages to get on the TV show. There's also a ridiculous subplot about some kind of sea goddess that the Brazilian people seem to pray to a lot. The film is supposed to be a kind of fairytale, but it just doesn't work.

Woman on Top is Penelope Cruz's first English language film and she performs extremely well considering the dumb material she's been given to work with. It seems that this film, like Isabella's TV show, has been designed simply to show off the lead actress.