<div><p>The heroine of The Mistress of Spices has special gifts and is also told she must never use them to advance her personal interests. An orphan with powers of divination, Tilo is trained in her native India in the culinary, pharmaceutical and mystic use of spices. She later becomes a key figure in the Subcontinental-Indian community of St José, California, and is courted by a hunk of an architect (Dylan McDermott), who, it transpires, has some mystic native-American blood in his veins. In this fey tale, beautiful former Miss World Aishwarya Rai plays the spice girl, and the one-sided conversations with the spices in her shop provide the kind of creepy experience that would make a cobra feel like shedding his skin. It's the work of the husband-and-wife team who made Bend it Like Beckham, and from soccer saga to spice odyssey must have seemed a logical move.</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=29556494&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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