Leticia

In the movie Tortilla Soup, I was attracted to the character Leticia, a chemistry teacher in her mid thirties, who the author introduces as a religious woman. We first see her at the beauty salon where Yolanda was getting a new hair look. We can see that she was closed minded, very opponent to change when the hair dresser tried to persuade her to have her hair done. She immediately refuses and storms out of the salon and on her way out, she stops in the mirror and takes a second look at the hair dresser suggestion, which is to have her hair cut at mid shoulder.


Leticia was very devoted to her students and we started to see her change when a baseball ball stroke into the classroom and she first meets the baseball coach. The students noticed her attraction towards the coach and started sending her love letters. As naive as she was, she believed it was the coach that was secretly in love with her. Leticia was perceived as the woman that was going to stay with her widow father for life. We saw this when her father and best friend talked about the girls, his best friend made a comment that she was getting old and that the train had left her.


The letters the students were sending her started to change her character, she started to be seem as a much happier person, often feeling guilty for her feelings, she will take longer at super praying to God for forgiveness and strength. She also started to loosen up when the sisters were having a discussion after one of them had purchased her own apartment and gave the news to the family at dinner. She broke some dishes and sang along with her sisters after. She also started to be concern with her appearance after the coach said they should work out and mentioned something about her wrinkles; he was out of worlds to try to connect with her. Soon after she broke up the news to her sister that she was falling for the coach and her sister helped her with her make over. The following day she went straight to the baseball game and kissed the coach in front of the whole crowd.


The coach's reaction wasn't what she had expected and that's when she found out about the whole prank. She was devastated but that was the incident that united her with the coach, soon after she secretly ran with him to Vegas and married him. She also had the courage to brake the news during dinner to her family and introduced her husband to her father.