Water, Chocolate: The Aftertaste Is Sweet Indeed

What Hollywood movie project will tantalize the taste buds of “Like Water for Chocolate” director Alfonso Arau?

The picture would have to have some of the same ingredients that made “Chocolate” so irresistible, the Mexico native said, like family, romance and that oh-so-hard-to-define quality, magical realism.

“There will always be love and food, those are the two elements of life,” he said last year, to explain how “Chocolate,” and the book written by his novelist-screenwriter wife Laura Esquivel, crossed into the record books as the highest-grossing Latin American release ever.

How about a romantic tale set in the vineyards of Napa Valley?

The story is “A Walk in the Clouds” for MGM, a remake of Alessandro Blasetti’s 1942 Italian movie “Four Steps in the Clouds,” the rights to which were acquired five years ago by producer Jerry Zucker.

Zucker, part of the team that made “Airplane!,” has more recently moved out on his own and into themes about death and afterlife with “Ghost” and “My Life.” He believed that Arau was a perfect match to direct his remake, and forwarded screenwriter Robert Kamen’s adaptation to the director at CAA, which signed Arau following “Chocolate’s” impressive box-office grosses.

At first Arau, besieged with offers, was reticent. This was a story about an Italian-American vintner family forced to cope with their daughter’s unexpected pregnancy and a suitor who is not the father.

Arau said he told Zucker that he was only interested if it was a Mexican-American-owned winery with the girl in peril dealing with Mexican religious and cultural values he could relate to. Also, Arau said he argued, “the totality of the workers in Napa and Sonoma are Mexicans,” though nearly all the wineries were founded and continue to be owned by descendants of Italians and Germans.

“The themes are larger than life . . . everything I want to film,” he said.

In the film, Victoria Aragon, an English literature student at the University of San Francisco, is abandoned by the professor who is the father of her unborn child. She meets WASP-y chocolate salesman Paul Sutton on the train and he, smitten by her, offers to pose as her husband when she returns to face her father at the Aragon winery. The two try out the charade over a three-day stay--with unexpected results.

No casting has been set, although Arau intends to try and find Latino actors and actresses for the key roles (except Paul) and currently is conducting a search on three continents (including Europe) for the woman who will play Victoria. Lumi Cavazos, who played Tita, the cook and passed-over bride in “Chocolate,” is among those auditioning.

Production is expected to begin in May on location.