A young lady cutting onions, expressing the influences of emotions and cooking, tells a story of the birth of a girl named Tita.

Tita's mother, Elena, gives birth on the kitchen table, assisted by the cook, Nacha.

Shortly afterwards Elena's husband dies of a heart attack when a stranger viciously tells him that his wife had an affair, and that his second daughter, Gertrudis, isn't his.

During the funeral Elena explains to Nacha that she can no longer have children and family tradition dictates that Tita, being the youngest, cannot marry but must take care of her mother until her death.

Nacha overhears Pedro tell his father that he is marrying Rosaura only in order to stay close to Tita.

As the guests eat the wedding cake, everyone is overcome with great sadness for lost lovers and begins to cry, followed by vomiting.

Tita sees this but tells Elena that Gertrudis was kidnapped and the soldiers set the shower house on fire.

This brings Tita to an angry outburst and Elena slapping her with a wooden spoon, resulting in a nose bleed.

For Tita, her rite of separation is the physical removal of her person from Elena's domination and into the dovecote, where she inhabits a state of nothingness for a period of seven days.

After a week of being in the dovecote, Tita is rescued by John Brown, a family doctor, who takes her to his home in Texas for treatment.

Tita's rite of transition occurs with this rescue by Dr. Brown, where she eats the healing soup he has made for her and learns of the tunnel of light that she later encounters at the end of the film.

Back at the ranch, a group of bandits invade the property, rape Chencha and push Elena off a cliff.

Rosaura has a difficult labor but gives birth to a healthy baby girl named Esperanza.

During a large social dinner Gertrudis, now a military General, returns to the ranch with Juan Alejandrez, now her husband, along with their squad.

Devastated, Tita commits suicide by swallowing matches, causing her body to spontaneously combust and the room to catch on fire, which spreads throughout the entire property.

She reveals that when Esperanza returned home from her honeymoon to find the property burned to ashes, she discovered Tita's cook book, which she kept and passed down to her daughter.

When Tita's emotions enter into the rose petal dish she serves the family for dinner, Gertrudis eats and becomes so aroused that her body begins to steam.

She runs to the outhouse, her heat setting it on fire, and departs home on the back of a horse ridden by a soldier of the Mexican Revolution.

The differing gender roles give each character depth and significance, highlighting the opposites at work in each sister.

The movie's main conflict is a family tradition which forbids the youngest daughter from marrying so that she will be free to take care of her mother.

So fierce is Mama Elena's desire to uphold tradition that she orders her oldest daughter, Rosaura, to marry Pedro, Tita's one true love.

Gertrudis, the middle child and offspring of an illicit affair between Mama Elena and her lover, runs away from home and joins the people fighting to end the dictatorship and corruption afflicting the common folk of Mexico.

Tired of the tradition that only the wealthy landowners had wealth and power, the people revolted, fighting for the workers of the land.

One way this is represented in the film is through the character of Mama Elena as her oppressive and tyrannical force to Tita.

Her character displays how corruptive traditions such as forced marriage hinder others and tear groups apart, as Mama Elena does to Tita to prevent her from marrying Pedro.

The website's critics consensus reads, "Like Water for Chocolate plays to the senses with a richly rewarding romance that indulges in magical realism to intoxicating effect.