To be fair, “Like Water For Chocolate” lets you know up front what kind of movie it’s going to be. A tear-streaked woman, our narrator, tells the audience about an old family saying about how you should put a chunk of onion on your head while chopping onions, leading us into a tale of other absolutely absurd — and, in some cases, thoroughly malicious — family traditions, like the one that turned her great-aunt Tita into a virtual slave in her own family home in the early 20th century along the Texas-Mexico border.

Based on the book by director Alfonso Arau’s (now ex-) wife Laura Esquivel, the legend goes that tearful Tita (played as an adult by the goddess-like Lumi Cavazos, also of “Bottle Rocket,” who I would describe as luminous even if it didn’t fit her name) cried her way out of the womb, resulting in enough salt that the family had a 40-pound bag of it that lasted in the kitchen for years (apparently no one asked about its provenance). When her father was told Tita was the child of an affair, he keeled over and died, and her Mama Elena decreed Tita would never marry or have children and would have to look after her forever — giving the already lustily horrible Elena free reign to treat the child with unrelenting abuse, suspicion and malice. Her nasty tradition is no match for a tea made by Nacha, the old family cook, which causes the first boy she meets at adolescence, Pedro (played as an adult by the steamy Marco Leonardi) to fall madly in love with Tita. Spitefully, Mama Elena gives Tita’s older daughter’s hand in marriage to Pedro, who accepts because he’ll be closer to Tita.

What follows is a 30-year dance with the untouchable, a Disney tale for adults about novela-esque unrequited passion (much of it Tita’s) boiling into her aphrodisiac cuisine (the title refers to a near boiling point when making hot chocolate).

“Sex and the Sartorial ethnoarchaeology of the tortilla: To wear a bra or not at the mataptso?”

When magical realism is done well — “Life of Pi,” the novels of Gabriel García Marquez, the movie “Frida” — it imbues meaning into things that the sensible self knows have a rational, but far less interesting explanation. The fabric of reality seems like a scattering handful of gold dust in slow motion. Recipes that make people sick do so not because they weren’t cooked thoroughly, but because a tear dropped into a batter, or because they were made with a frustrated lover’s roses.

“Like Water For Chocolate” makes an utterly convincing case that such fantasies don’t have to be left behind as children, but given the extremes of make-believe one must accept, when done less than perfectly, its wide-eyed sincerity approaches parody (one very nearly laughs out loud when the sincere narrator informs us, after the engagement of Pedro and Tita’s sister, that it was too bad black holes hadn’t been discovered, “because then she’d have understood that a black hole had landed in her chest and allowed the infinitely cold air to rush in.” Now look, that’s a lovely line, but I’m just too bitter and cynical to re-type it without wanting to roll my eyes. Saying that, the fine actors, lovely desert scenes and mouth-watering food (recommended only if you’re maintaining a grueling ranch lifestyle without running water or electricity) more than compensate for any grinchiness in your soul. In the hands of Arau, who also directed “A Walk in the Clouds,” this is “Gone With the Wind” south of the border, where we forgive irrationality because of the heat, because of our hearts, and maybe because of black holes. We do want our heroine to find love. We thrill to the thought of dealing with hot summer nights with ice-house blocks of ice and manhandled watermelon, the bone-white sheets flapping in the desert wind, the shadows of cactus against the red gauze of the Chihuahuan Desert sunset, the idea that someone can use their sorrow to knit a field-long quilt and imbue everything they cook with the command to be good, and true, and love deep. Even if it means accepting some womb-salt along the way.

Ashley O’Dell reviews movies that aren’t in the theater anymore. She lives in North Hollywood, near the In-N-Out Burger.