Mistura is a 1960s Peruvian drama about Norma (Bárbara Mori), a privileged French-Peruvian woman whose life falls apart when her husband Roberto runs off with a woman half his age. What follows is the bitter realization that her ticket to elite society is tied to Roberto and that her friends at the County Club are superficial at best. She faces losing her richly ornate home and extravagant lifestyle.
Luckily, the longtime and ever-loyal family chauffeur, Óscar (César Ballumbrosio), suggests she start her own business and open a restaurant. Óscar, who plays his role brilliantly, is a central figure in helping Norma discover her hidden culinary and business talents and in helping her recover from a horrible period of romantic betrayal.
Ricardo de Montreuil wrote and directed Mistura. Peruvian-born and a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, he moved to Los Angeles in 2005. He directed the 2017 movie Lowriders, starring Eva Longoria, which is known among Latino moviegoers. Montreuil’s new movie Mistura is a gem.
Mistura serves as a central metaphor for the protagonist’s journey of cultural, social, and culinary discovery. While the film is about post-crisis adaptation, it is also about resilience, race, and class. The culinary aspect is centrally important to the themes. Among Latin American capitals, Lima stands out because Peruvians take special pride in their cuisine. Their food is internationally acclaimed. Norma conceives of an idea for a French restaurant because of her father’s elite connections with France and French cooking, but in reality, French cuisine has little appeal in Lima in the 1960s.
Norma, a recovering ex-socialite, is saved by reinventing herself and coming to terms with her Peruvian culture, which offered much more in terms of Lima’s culinary needs than a French restaurant. In historical and sociological terms, the dramatic change from French culinary traditions to a hybrid of Peru’s Indigenous cuisine represents decolonization. Norma’s decision to hire a good chef, played by Tomás Matsufuji, is monumental. Matsufuji, who plays himself, is a prominent Peruvian chef of Japanese descent who is associated with the broader Nikkei culinary tradition in Peru, which blends Japanese and Peruvian influences.
Norma is superbly played by Bárbara Mori, a Uruguayan/Mexican actress best known for her role in Rubí, a smash, highly–rated Mexican [Televisa] soap opera which earned her a TVyNovelas Award. There is irony in that the cuisine that saves her restaurant is a blend of native Peruvian and Japanese cuisine because Mori’s paternal grandfather was Japanese. Mori moved with her family to Mexico City when she was twelve, and by age 14, she had landed a modeling job because of her striking beauty.
The movie is set in Lima, Peru in 1965, the same year that I visited the city while on a UT Austin student exchange program. On the way to Santiago, Chile, we stopped in Lima for a week’s visit. The film shows several TV images of Peru’s President Fernando Belaúnde Terry and a protest gathering led by Peruvian labor legend Raúl Haya de la Torre. It was a fruitful stopover as my college classmates and I met Peru’s president and Haya de la Torre.
In the movie, I recognized a TV clip of Peru’s president, Fernando Belaúnde Terry, who graduated from UT Austin in 1935 and returned to Peru, where he established himself as a prominent architect. His connections to the leading elite families of Peru made his transition into politics possible. UT Austin connections allowed our student exchange group to have an hour-long visit with the president, where he told us about his country’s history and traditions.
Mistura also includes a brief street scene with labor and student protestors, most likely a nod to Raul Haya de la Torre, the founder and leader of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA). De la Torre founded APRA in the 1930s and by the 1960s had become one of the most influential leftist-nationalist figures in 20th-century Latin America. By the early 1960s, Haya was still an important political force in Peru and ran for president in 1962 as the APRA candidate. De la Torre won the popular vote, but the election was annulled after the military intervened, and new elections were held in 1963. The political television clips shown in Mistura provide subtle insights into the political and socio-economic divisions in Peru during the era portrayed in the movie.
Montreuil wanted to make the viewer see and understand what Lima was like in 1965, and he is highly successful in doing so. The Lima scenes looked very authentic. The Volkswagen “Beetle” cars on the streets add to the scene’s authenticity. In one poignant incident, Oscar, who has driven his boss, Norma, to the bank, encountered the type of racism prevalent in many Latin American communities at the time. Oscar is ordered out of the bank by a security guard committed to the primary social and business rule at the time: “Whites only.” Mistura entertains while making viewers aware of the pain inflicted by judging others from different backgrounds or walks of life and by race and class.
In 1965, Peru, like many major Latin American countries at the time, had made little progress in social and racial equality. The film offers numerous instances of racism. Oscar [actor Cesar Ballumbrosio], an Afro-Latino who plays the loyal family chauffeur, is reminded several times of his inferior status in society. Cesar Ballumbrosio is an Afro-Peruvian percussionist and cultural heir from the famous Ballumbrosio family. His family is linked to El Carmen, a major center of Black Peruvian musical traditions. The actor is also known as “Pudy” Ballumbrosio and is a major contributor to sustaining and modernizing Afro-Peruvian heritage. Ballumbrosio represents a family tradition that links music, dance, ritual, and identity in Peru’s coastal Black communities.
Norma, who is traumatized by the public spectacle of her husband’s infidelity, undergoes a painful transition from a socialite to a regular person, but turns her life around by finding her true self. While first appearing arrogant and cruel, she proves herself capable of becoming a caring individual who cherishes true friendship. Norma discovers that she is happier when she finds purpose and direction and concludes that her success and happiness are partly due to fusion.
The title of the movie Mistura is defined as a culinary and cultural blend: The term signifies the fusion of different ingredients, cultures, and traditions that define Peruvian identity, specifically blending elite tastes with those of marginalized communities. Mistura uses cuisine to demonstrate the nature and creativity of the fusion of cultural traditions. The movie’s cinematography captures the importance of food and cooking as significant cultural rituals.
In the end, Norma is saved by reinvention and resilience, but also by forming alliances with the community people she had once ignored or looked down upon because she believed they were below her social station. Norma is also saved by ceviche, Peru’s national dish, which her Japanese-Peruvian chef introduces to her. Her concept of a new restaurant is devoted to tasty Peruvian food. Today, ceviche is officially recognized by UNESCO as part of Peru’s Intangible Cultural Heritage along with other native Peruvian foods.
Ricardo de Montreuil’s beautifully written movie Mistura entertains and educates audiences about the history and culture of a Latin American country not often featured in Hollywood films. The film also introduces talented Latina and Latino actors to American audiences.
Mistura is currently playing only in movie theaters in New York and Miami, and it opened in Los Angeles this weekend, with other cities to follow. For more information, visit the Outsider Pictures website.
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Copyright 2026 by Ricardo Romo. All images used under the “fair use” proviso of the copyright law.