The Spokesman-Review from Spokane, Washington • 66

Page 14 Friday, October 19, 2001 i i The Spokesman-Review I i ALh.Ii A 4 I 4 4 4 k. 4 4 Tortilla Soup has a big helping of family charm Elizabeth Pena, Tamara Mello and Jacqueline Obradors play three sisters in Tortilla Soup. MOVIE REVIEW Tortilla Soup Locations: Newport Cinemas Credits: Directed by Mana Ripoll, starnng Hector Elizondo, Jacqueline Obradors, Elizabeth Pena, Tamara Mello, Paul Rodnguez, Raquel Welch Running time: 1:43 RaUng: PG-13 Jill you Can Eat Sunday Crunch 10am-2pm 14" RESERVATIONS: 455-5072 SHENANIGAN'S SUNDAY BRUNCH $2.00 OFF Coupon good thru 110801 Maximum 2 coupons pr table rSEAFooBr shenamgaivs FALLS CT. 455-6690 i Sir determined to make Martin her latest husband. Tortilla Soup is a quiet movie that gently simmers as its flavors and pleasures deepen.

Director Maria Ripoll allows the viewer to The House of Fury fj FT N. 332 SPOKANE Sir SiA-a (A feel like an unseen guest at the dinner table, and the screenplay she follows avoids big, easy outbursts. The real star of Tortilla Soup is the food and the melding of cultures out of which it is created. Thanks to the dazzling food-preparation scenes they are to this movie what production numbers are to a musical and a mood-setting Latin-music soundtrack, Tortilla Soup presents a portrait of I lispanic life in America that pays more attention to the passing details than headline stereotypes of drug use and gang wars. and ESPN present: 4:33 sr.

nr Fa TICKETS $12.50 $258,150 I By Tom Maurstad The Dallas Morning News You may want to eat before seeing Tortilla Soup, because if youre at all hungry you may find yourself lunging at the screen. Inspired by Ang Lees Eat Drink Man Woman, this film is set in Los Angeles, where a widowed father and master chef (Hector Elizondo) is raising three daughters. Tortilla Soup opens with an extended sequence in which Dad lovingly and artfully prepares the familys Sunday dinner a weekly ritual. The scene is beautifully choreographed, and Elizondo performs wilh all the focus and intensity of a conductor leading his orchestra. It is also the perfect introduction to the intimate interplay of a family in which all critical moments occur in the kitchen or at the dinner table and food is the center of life and culture.

Perhaps because of this, hardly any of the delectable food covering the table ever gets eaten; something always happens to interrupt. Thanks to his three daughters, Martin Naranjo has his hands full with more than that days entree. The oldest sister, Lctitia (Elizabeth Pena), is a schoolteacher who has gone into emotional hibernation, with religious devotion the only passion she permits herself to feel. Then she meets the schools new coach (Paul Rodriguez), and her slumbering inner self starts to stir. The baby, Maribel (Tamara Mello), tries to present to the world an air of rebellious confidence.

But just on the cusp of womanhood, she is almost drowning in uncertainty and confusion. In the middle is Carmen (Jacqueline Obradors), the high-functioning sister whose successful career as a corporate consultant belies the passion for cooking she inherited from her father. And at the center is Martin, the master chef who thinks he is losing his sense of taste and smell, the father who feels he is losing not so much control of his daughters as his ability to guide and protect them. Adding spice to the goings-on is family friend and single mom Yolanda (Constance Marie) and her one-woman floor show of a mother, Hortensia (Raquel Welch), who is rRIDAYOCTOBER19THf200 11 rRTLT.i::a Jtiasi m. th or Notre Dame RETURNS FOR HALLOWEEN (4 iiinsi 12021 VS.

Jumiim E.VIKER 118-21 I CALL THE CASINO 03 GA SELECT- A-33AT AT I -8G0-323-SEATF03 TICKETS! Thank You for Voting Us 1 Casino! COEUR D'ALENE 1923 Silent film starring Lon Chaney, Charles C. Bradley, Organist St. John's Cathedral, Grand Bird, at 12 Avenue Tickets: $8.00 Seniors: $6.00 12untl er $5.00 Available at all Select-A-Seat outlets or hy phone: CALL 325-SEAT a.uit Purchase online at vw tichctwest.eom Underwritten tv: IgJ SAFECO CASINO flwmfict. mmmmm.