This is a story filled with happy moments and is as sweet as the almond cake that Miguel makes for every celebration. Birthdays, Saints Days, weddings and the Annual Queen festival...none of them would be complete without Miguel's almond cake, based on a secret family recipe. Everybody loves Miguel especially Angela who lives next door.Not everyone can express their love in words. Miguel is one of those. He admits he expresses his feelings through his hands always busy creating delicious mouth-watering delicacies in the family kitchen. If ever there was a passionate man, it is Muguel, a passion for pleasing others through his non-stop devotion to his work.If you enjoyed "Babette's Feast", you will also enjoy this film. As Miguel decorates his assortment of cakes with icing and almonds and blobs of vanilla cream you can almost smell that wonderful perfume that pervades the kitchen when the oven doors are opened. Angela says Miguel smells like all his creations. He smells of fresh bread and vanilla and sweet almond meal.Miguel's shyness (well-portrayed in this film) makes it impossible for him to make advances towards Angela, but he does summon up enough courage to create a large almond cake with the words "I love you" on top. He puts it in the fridge for the right moment. Bur Fate can play nasty tricks!Free-spirited Angela frustrated by Miguel's non-committal nature marries a lawyer whom she meets at the University Law School and they move to Madrid but her thoughts are always with Miguel whom she leaves behind in the little Spanish village.What I like about this film is the message of sincerity and love and tenderness that each of the characters portray. Even in moments of disappointment there is no hatred or spite or vengeance. The director has shown great skill in creating this pervading mood of kindness and thoughtfulness towards others. One feels that the emotions are genuine.This is a film to be seen and savoured like one of Miguel's little delicacies created with love and devotion to his art.

I stumbled across this movie late last night on sbs, and was pleasantly surprised by it.The movie centres on Miguel, who works in the family pastry business as a young boy. From childhood, Miguel (Carlos Fuentes) has always been driven by two passions: his dedication to his family's pastry shop and his love for Angela (Maria Adanez), the girl next door in his village of Benidorm, Spain. Successful in business, but not in love, Miguel never dared confess his love for Maria as he feared it would conflict with her dreams of freedom and getting out of their village. Angela does leave their village and has a life a world away from Miguel but years later they meet again. Are they destined to be together or will fate separate them again? Directed by Juan Luis Iborra, this film was screened at the 2001 Malaga Film Festival. (In Spanish, English subtitles) (2000) PG WS "all round a good movie, bout staying true to ur love but at the same time, showing the price u can pay by not expressing ur feelings to someone and missing a life without them. If you r into sad romantic movies u will enjoy this one*********************spoilers alert**********basically wot happens***Anyways, an amazing story of miguel's undying love for angela, he forms flings with girls but no one comes close as to his feelings for angela. A quite sad story of how a love for a person can leave u so unfulfilled with ur life, as it is with Miguel. He longs for Angela but doesn't let her til they're old, by this stage Angela is married with kids, she then leaves her husband for miguel, but at that same time, miguel dies in an accident.

I've almost never seen a film so strong in its character as "Tiempos de Azúcar". This is a love story unlike any other about two people growing up together with entirely different passions and an unexplainable attraction for one another. The story would not be very interesting in itself if it wasn't for the excellence of the actors and the direction, a combination that reached for our hearts in the movie theatre in a way that brought out tears of passion. At the same time of being a romantic drama the picture gives the audience a fascinating lesson in 20th century Spanish history, as it stretches out during about 40 years from the death of Franco to the celluar phone culture of modern Western society. In the beginning of the film we see the two characters as they were, the two 10-year-old Spanish villagers grow up together. The boy without a father, trying to support his mother by working hard in the family bakery that he loves and his best and only friend, the little girl next door who's always trying to divert his attention from work to common pleasure. The young boy's, and eventually man's, dedication to his job in the bakery is explained by his needs for a safe and stabile world, stronger after the death of his mother. At the same time his childhood friend fights the dictator regime, takes a scolarship and enjoys a rich social life thanks to her indoubtable charm and beautiful appearence. Although she makes several attempts to create something other than mere friendship between them he won't let it go that far, even though many of his his old friends repetedly urge the young, kind workaholic to marry. After a few years, when his female soulmate finds someone else to share her life with, he realises that time has grown regretably short... The movie continues with the development of the little fishing village to the tourism capital of the Spanish westcoast, Benidorm, and portraits the male main character's whole life from birth to the eventual, dramatic, death. As a romantic drama it's a very good portrait of two people in a cultural environment that can seem very fascinatingly exotic for a child of the Western movie society. Still, it isn't very inventive and the movie is of course a lot worse than the book itself. To really get entangled with it the way I have takes some interest in Mediterranian culture and Spanish history. But anyway, due to excellent performances and art value this is a movie that really represents a beginning of a breakthrough in European regional film.