Woman on Top: Movie Review, DVD Review (2000)

(Originally published 2000)

Directed by Fina Torres, written by Vera Blasi, 93 minutes rated R.

There’s something about Penelope Cruz, the sexy star of Fina Torres’ “Woman on Top,” that’s suggestive of something, well, overtly suggestive.

Whether holding a tomato near her breasts and saying “you need to make sure they’re full and plump,” or lifting a chili pepper to her nose and inhaling its aroma while she dreams of a man, or even looking despondent as she stands against a San Francisco sunset, there’s never a moment in “Woman” that she doesn’t smolder with sexuality.

She’s like a young Sophia Loren crossed with the delicate features and vulnerability of Audrey Hepburn, and she’s perfect for this role.

Here, she’s Isabella, a woman at once gifted and cursed by the gods--she’s an amazing chef who can whip up intoxicating Brazilian dishes, but she also suffers from acute motion sickness, a device Torres uses throughout her film to fun, if often messy, cinematic effect.

Indeed, Isabella’s motion sickness is so dire, it hints in part at the film’s title--she cannot have sex with her husband, Toninho (Murilo Benicio), without being on top.

That doesn’t suit Toninho, a man’s man who swears he loves Isabella, but who nevertheless is caught having an affair with the sexpot who lives above them. “Isabella, I’m a man!” he screams when she catches them. “I have to be on top sometimes!”

Hurt and angry, Isabella takes to the air and relocates from Brazil to San Francisco, where she reunites with her best friend, Monica (Harold Perrineau Jr. from HBO’s “Oz”), an outrageous drag queen, and eventually meets a television producer (Mark Feuerstein) who changes her life with a cooking show that becomes so popular, it literally puts her on top.

All of this is as light as the cream on one of Isabella’s pies, but it’s sweet and often endearing, a film that, much like the best scenes in “Babette’s Feast” and “Tom Jones,” strikes just the right balance between food and sex.

Cruz is strong, as is Feuerstein and Benicio, but it’s Perrineau’s drag queen who steals the film, which, in the end, isn’t total confection. At its most serious, it explores what it’s like to work in television, a medium that can certainly lift a person’s career, but at what personal cost?

Grade: B+

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