The latest adaptation of Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate will premiere in just a few days on Max. The Spanish-language limited series isn’t the first adaptation of Esquivel’s book, of course—in 1992, director Alfonso Arau helmed a movie adaptation that was both critically and commercially successful.
It’s been thirty-two years since that film, and the upcoming series is an adaptation of the book for a new generation. “Laura Esquivel gave us a classic,” executive producer Salma Hayek Pinault said in a Zoom press conference Reactor attended [Note: all quotes were in Spanish and translated into English]. “It will never be out of fashion because it always touches us.”
While the story is timeless, it also takes place at a specific time in Mexican history—the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century—something the limited series integrates into the characters’ development over several episodes. And at its heart, as Hayek Pinault also explained at the press conference, the book “is a story of changes.”
She continued, “This means political changes within the country, but also changes in the home, and how women have always fought to have a voice or to control their fate… through this story, you can see that [women during the Revolution] had to defend their homes, to protect their families, to see how to feed their own families, and we forget women’s participation in all the political conflicts of different countries.”
If you’re eager to see how the series adaptation incorporates these themes, I’ve got good news for you: Like Water for Chocolate premieres on Max on November 3, 2024, with additional episodes dropping subsequent Sundays.
