Woman on Top (2000)

I think you have to understand myth's and ideas in other parts of the world to be able to understand the movie. Personally, I loved it. It gives you that trip to Brazil without leaving your house.

The music was great, the story was a bit cheesy but refreshing. Open your eyes to other cultures. Allow yourself to enjoy the simple things such as cooking. I think it was sensual, funny and refreshing.

I think Penelope Cruz did a great job. Having seen most of her movies, I can say that her best movies are the ones that are not overly popular. Woman on top gives women the opportunity to be successful and show men that we can do it.

Fmovies: This is a modern day romantic fairy-tale, minus the charm. The storyline is silly, the treatment of the subject -- if there is one - is disappointingly silly, even for what's supposed to be a lighthearted romantic comedy.

I don't know who the target audience of this film is; surely today's moviegoing young women know that a woman deserves better than to be stashed away in the kitchen; and surely they know that "educating" a boyfriend or husband is a difficult task (if at all achievable), requiring more than running away to fashionable S.F. and applying some hocus-pocus. Perhaps the film is aimed at men, who get an extended chance to drool at Penelope Cruz, who indeed looks lovely and "fetching". As for myself, I'd rather watch this lovely actress in better films, such as All About My Mother.

Let me qualify my comments by identifying myself as a septuagenarian movie buff. Well, a movie buff until I was driven out of the theaters by noise passing for music, mumbled duologue and a concerted degrading of cinematic values.

I was not surprised to find that the generation of movie goers that has reduced film making to the dark age of cinema would rate this delight of magical realism as less than mediocre. It is in fact the first movie that I have seen, with the exception of "Chocolat", that successfully invites the viewer to enjoy art as reality. The director delivers his vision without disturbing the telling of an amusing story. The duologue is well constructed and UNDERSTANDABLE. The music is soft and supportive to the cinematic theme.

It is the joy of watching Penelope Cruz with her winsome, effortless beauty that makes WOMAN ON TOP very special. How can anyone who loves movies not believe this movie is extraordinary?

Woman on Top fmovies. Low rent pseudo passion and magic, without a trace of real emotion. Visuals are below par, except for the gorgeous Ms. Cruz. Too bad she lent herself to such self-conscious arty shallowness. Otherwise I really liked it.

WOMAN ON TOP is one of those films that was made, publicized and viewed as pastiche and because of its honesty as a simple romantic comedy, it rates higher than many of the over the top and overproduced competitors. The film is colorful, filled with wonderful Bossa Nova music, and has enough eye candy to almost make you forget the main dishes! Isabella Oliveira (Penélope Cruz) lives in Bahia, Brazil totally in love with Toninho Oliveira (Murilo Benício) where the two have a restaurant featuring Isabella's passionate cooking and Toninho's macho front man role. Isabella has a problem: motion sickness - she cannot fly, ride in a car, or assume the bottom position during sex or she becomes violently ill (it seems that the sea goddess compensated her problem by making her an inimitable chef). All is well until Toninho has a brief affair that drives the crushed Isabella to move to San Francisco alone despite her love for Toninho. There she moves in with her old friend Monica from Bahia (Harold Perrineau as a superbly enacted crossed dressed drag queen) and begins her unsuccessful search for a job. In order to overcome her longing for Toninho and regain her culinary skills she makes a pact with the sea goddess, forsaking ever loving Toninho again. Eventually Isabella lands a TV show on Passionate Cooking when desperate producer Cliff (Mark Feuerstein) gets a whiff of her talent. She is an immediate success. Meanwhile Toninho, unable to endure life in Bahia without Isabella, flies to San Francisco and begins a series of Bossa Nova serenades to win her back. Cliff places Toninho on Isabella's show as background music and the ratings soar. But it is the ultimately the conflict resolution between Isabella and Toninho that brings the story to its expected end.

The story may be light and the script may be pedestrian, but the direction and camera work suffuse this film with Latin American magical realism and that keeps it lighthearted and fun. Cruz is terrific, Perrineau is the true star of the show displaying a sophisticated and sensitive acting skill that is very special, and Murilo Benício is not only a hunk and eye candy but also a fine singer and a warm actor who deserves a lot of attention. Story five, stars six. Have fun with this one! Grady Harp, March 06

One of the hallmarks of independent cinema is that the filmmakers do not under-estimate their audiences, who tend to be better informed, more intelligent, and more demanding than those who view only Hollywood's outpourings. Thus, they are emancipated from the necessity to be blunt. They can create films of integrity, subtlety, and convey emotions and intellectual content that is never present in more mainstream films. However, this is not the case with Woman on Top. Despite being an independent film, distributed by Searchlight, who also handled the excellent Boys Don't Cry, it seems to want nothing more than to be a mainstream film. This is, perhaps, what is most offensive about it.

It is at this point that I ought to inform you that in the proceeding paragraphs, there are comments which may reveal elements of the plot of this film, such as it is.

In the hour or so that I managed to stomach of this unrelentingly vapid film, the plot barely managed to limp forward from its starting point. The characters were not developed beyond their appearances. The primary character, a female chef from Brazil who moves to San Francisco after the breakdown of her marriage, and all her actions, seem based solely on her aesthetic appeal. Indeed, this is also one of the few sources of the tired humour present in the film. These comedic moments are, without exception, crude and desperately unfunny. Listless slapstick moments rub shoulders with endless scenes of men drooling over the young Brazilian woman and staring in disbelief at her transvestite friend, evidently present to add some essential uniqueness to the film and because, as everyone is aware, anyone who lives in San Francisco is either an intellectual or a transvestite.

Cinema, without doubt, has huge potential as a medium for artistic expression, and there are independent films that are intelligent, well-made and engaging. However, Woman on Top, in striving desperately to be a mainstream success, sacrifices any shred of dignity or integrity one could hope to see in a film. Thus, and in sum, it is nothing more than a lazily made, dim-witted film, painfully unfunny and, if taken as an indication of the drift of independent movies (which, incidentally, I don't think, or at least hope, it is) rather worrying, and certainly sickening.