Hungry Woman in Paris

Screenwriter Lopez ventures into fiction with her abysmal chronicle of a depressed journalist who learns to cook while attempting to find herself in Paris. After calling off her engagement and after her cousin Luna's suicide, Canela begins losing it, but comes out of her funk once she decides to use her honeymoon tickets to Paris. Upon hearing that she can extend her stay by attending culinary school, Canela signs up, and soon she's in the sack with her class translator, as well as a handful of strangers and chefs. Canela also reflects on her childhood as an illegal immigrant and her status as a woman and once-again foreigner. Mixed in are a number of clunky digs against the Bush administration. Lopez has a hard time making the elements fuse, and her narrative is choppy and amateurish, with scenes swinging from frantic kitchen action through dreamy philosophizing to graphic sex and back. Often mentioned are the famous expat writers who made their names in Paris, but this work is far below theirs. (Mar.)