Metacritic Film

Mistress of Spices

Starring Aishwarya Rai, Dylan McDermott, Ayesha Dharker, Nitin Chandra Ganatra, Sonny Gill Dulay, Anupam Kher, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Toby Marlow

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Rainbow Films USA
Drama  |  Foreign  |  Romance
92 minutes | Color
UK
Released In Theaters May 5, 2006

Based on the novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, the movie follows Tilo (Rai), a member of an old, mystical cult that worships spice in all its forms. She is sent to Oakland to open a shop and help people using the mysterious powers of the spices. However, when she is drawn to a man (McDermott) who enters her life, she begins to question her devotion to the cause.

WRITTEN BY
Gurinder Chadha
Paul Mayeda Berges
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (novel)

DIRECTED BY
Paul Mayeda Berges

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

xx / 100

Critic Reviews

50 The Hollywood Reporter
Shades of "Like Water for Chocolate" and "Chocolat" -- but unlike the latter's tender Juliette Binoche-Johnny Depp romance, the ordained Rai-McDermott union fails to generate any convincing heat, and no amount of cardamom pods or lotus root is going to help.
50 Variety
Beautiful but lifeless, poetic but unelevated, The Mistress of Spices reps a brave but flawed attempt at that most unforgiving of contemporary genres, magical realism.
50 The New York Times
This is a one-dimensional, sometimes illogical film, but it's certainly good-looking.

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