funnystrange.com

September 2 movie: Fiesta. Last night was our own little fiesta: Sylvia came over for dinner and Ricardo Montalban movies. We had originally planned to also watch My Man and I, which Sylvia has on tape, but due to the lateness of the evening we only got to Fiesta. Montalban's first English language movie, Fiesta is a fun little romp about a young Mexican who is expected to become a matador like his father, but secretly wants to be a concert pianist. For an Esther Williams fan I think this would be a disappointment as the movie is sadly lacking in water. But for a Ricardo Montalban fan, it's a treat.

The movie is an unintentional exercise in multiculturalism, with Esther Williams playing Montalban's twin sister, Mary Astor as his mother, Fortunio Bonanova as the father (at least he's from Spain), Akim Tamiroff as the family retainer, John Carroll as Williams' boyfriend, and Cyd Charisse as Montalban's girlfriend. Montalban may be the only Latino actor with a speaking part in this movie entirely set in Mexico.

We had fun with the accents (or lack thereof): Astor, Williams, Charisse and Carroll didn't even try (we laughed every time Williams addressed her boyfriend Pepe as "Peppy"); Bonanova and Tamiroff produced passable accents; and Montalban's was so over the top we would have thought he was faking if we didn't know better. It was as if he felt like he needed enough Mexican accent to make up for all the others.

Other funny moments were watching the bullfighting scenes, as they shifted from close-up to long shot, with a running commentary of "Ricardo .... not Ricardo! Ricardo ... not Ricardo!" Also, early in the movie the father bizarrely threatens another character with "And for that, he must pay with his life!" From then on every time anyone disagreed with the father, Sylvia would hilariously add "and for that, you too must pay with your life!"

Dinner was as fun as the movie. We had Mexican food, naturally! Nothing fancy, just a Rick Bayless recipe for a stew of chorizo and chayote. Which is a summer squash that looks vaguely like a pear but tastes vaguely like zucchini, only milder and sweeter. Raw chayote also leaves a gluey paste on your hands when you handle it. The cookbook said you just need to scrub your hands, and I did (with the scrubby pad even), but that stuff does not want to come off. I still have some of it on my hand. Next time I will definitely wear gloves.

We also had green rice (rice with pureed parsley and cilantro added to the cooking liquid) and Sylvia brought fruit salad, heirloom tomatoes and some really nice avocado flavored cheese. She also brought a "Hungarian Black" pepper which looked a lot like a black jalapeno. Georg and Sylvia ate it but I did not. They said it was not as hot as a raw jalapeno, but still hot. It was really nice to make dinner for a friend without it being some huge elaborate dinner party that takes days to prepare. Just a fun, low stress evening.