Woman on Top is less a date movie than a digestif one.
Penélope Cruz is the Latin babe who has to be in the driver's seat - literally, otherwise she has motion sickness. Her macho husband, however, finds it hard to be between her and the mattress and seeks a softer lay in another bed.
Off flounces Penélope to San Francisco, along with a flamboyant transvestite childhood pal, and soon she's starring as the telly chef of a top-rated show that prepares food to appeal to the parts that the digestive tract doesn't reach.
It's a naive bit of work, with non-stop samba and salsa, and Cruz is no match for Carmen Miranda, who carried her fruit basket on her head, but shook the tree all the way down. Every Latino stereotype is worked into the fairy tale, including the casting of bread on the waters - though not mentioning the advice on such gestural gastronomy once given by Steven Sondheim, who famously said that if you were lucky it would come back as a smoked-salmon sandwich.
Woman On Top
Cert: cert15
