WOMAN ON TOP, Directed by Fina Torres. Written by Vera Blasi. 93 minutes. Rated R.

There’s something about Penelope Cruz, the sexy star of Fina Torres’ “Woman on Top,” that’s suggestive of something, well, overtly suggestive.

Whether holding a tomato near her breasts and saying “you need to make sure they’re full and plump,” or lifting a chili pepper to her nose and inhaling its aroma while she dreams of a man, or even looking despondent as she stands against a San Francisco sunset, there’s never a moment in “Woman” that she doesn’t smolder with sexuality.

She’s like a young Sophia Loren crossed with the delicate features and vulnerability of Audrey Hepburn, and she’s perfect for this role.

Here, she’s Isabella, a woman at once gifted and cursed by the gods – she’s an amazing chef who can whip up intoxicating Brazilian dishes, but she also suffers from acute motion sickness, a device Torres uses throughout her film to fun, if often messy, cinematic effect.

Indeed, Isabella’s motion sickness is so dire, it hints in part at the film’s title-she cannot have sex with her husband, Toninho (Murilo Benicio), without being on top.

That doesn’t suit Toninho, a man’s man who swears he loves Isabella, but who nevertheless is caught having an affair with the sexpot who lives above them. “Isabella, I’m a man!” he screams when she catches them. “I have to be on top sometimes!”

Hurt and angry, Isabella takes to the air and relocates from Brazil to San Francisco, where she reunites with her best friend, Monica (Harold Perrineau Jr. from HBO’s “Oz”), an outrageous drag queen, and eventually meets a television producer (Mark Feuerstein) who changes her life with a cooking show that becomes so popular, it literally puts her on top.

All of this is as light as the cream on one of Isabella’s pies, but it’s sweet and often endearing, a film that, much like the best scenes in “Babette’s Feast” and “Tom Jones,” strikes just the right balance between food and sex.

Cruz is strong, as is Feuerstein and Benicio, but it’s Perrineau’s drag queen who steals the film, which, in the end, isn’t total confection.

At its most serious, it explores what it’s like to work in television, a medium that can certainly lift a person’s career, but at what personal cost?

Grade: B+

On Video

FINAL DESTINATION, Directed by James Wong. Written by Wong, Glen Morgan and Jeffrey Reddick. 90 minutes. Rated R

The opening of James Wong’s “Final Destination” is about as subtle as an amplified death rattle – only not quite as fun to listen to.

It begins with Alex (Devan Sawa) and his classmates preparing for a doomed trip to France. We know this trip is doomed not only because Alex is clairvoyant and sees it happen moments before it happens, but because Wong tells us it’s doomed with foreshadowing that’s so blatant, it’s surprising he didn’t underscore the first 20 minutes with flashing arrows and the following text running along the bottom of the screen:

“See this rusty hinge, kids? This broken door? That careless flight attendant? And these other pieces of faulty airplane equipment? I’m focusing on them because I want you to PAY ATTENTION – something really bad is going to happen!”

When handled well, this sort of spoon-feeding can build tension; Hitchcock was a master at it. He gave audiences just enough to draw them in, while never revealing more than necessary.

It’s called restraint and the best horror films and best directors have it.

Wong doesn’t. Wong doesn’t exactly have the same finesse. Wong’s idea of restraint is to sever a woman’s throat with an exploding computer monitor, have her stumble around her house while she drowns in her own blood, electrocute her, and then, as if that weren’t enough, have a set of butcher knives fall on top of her and pin her to the floor.

Still not enough? As with each calamity that occurs in “Final Destination,” all of this happens while John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” warbles in the background. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think this is the sort of legacy Mr. Denver had in mind when he himself died in a plane crash.

“Final Destination” is preoccupied with cheating death; that’s its premise.

It feeds into the teen dream of invincibility and immortality, which is its most interesting angle, but Wong isn’t interested in exploring interesting angles. He’d rather sever a head than explore what’s going on inside that head.

Worse are his characters – never once do they show genuine remorse when their friends start dropping dead.

Instead, they just regroup, thank the high heavens it wasn’t them who was struck down by that city bus, and carry on in their thoughtless, insular, unlikable worlds.

The question that arises while watching the film is this: Who are we rooting for in “Final Destination”? The Grim Reaper? It’s doubtful that’s what Wong had in mind, but that’s just what happens.

In this movie, death is a breath of fresh air that can’t move fast enough.

Grade: D-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Monday and Thursday in the NEWS, and Tuesday and Thursday on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6.