Jose and Nina are not a couple. All the same, he walks out of the kitchen, chases her into the subway, apologizes that his brother humiliated her in front of the staff, and finds out she was late because she is pregnant.
Now what kind of a reason is that for being late? If I were in the habit of criticizing other critics, which I am not, I would quote Robert Koehler of Variety, who writes: "Nina, however, could easily have been to work on time, since her delay was due to her buying and using a home pregnancy test -- something she rationally would have done after her shift was over." Uh-huh. And if Mr. Koehler feared he was pregnant, which would he do first? Buy and use a home pregnancy test, or review "Bella"? I don't trust a review written by some guy who's wondering if he's pregnant.
Jose and Nina walk and talk, have lunch, share memories, and go to a restaurant where the owner, a friend of Jose's, offers to hire them both. Along the way, Jose tries to persuade her to have the child. He is motivated by reasons that are fully explained in early premonitions and later flashbacks, which I will not reveal. Perhaps the clincher on his argument is provided by a visit to his mother and father (Angelica Aragon and Jaime Tirelli), whose warmth is a contrast to Nina's own wretched past.
Counterpoint is provided by Jose's brother Manny (Manny Perez), who apparently was not as affected by the sunshine in his childhood home. He's a martinet and perfectionist, a taskmaster, heartless, and (as it turns out), incompetent to run his own kitchen. His attitude to Nina's pregnancy is about as abstract as Robert Koehler's. Compare them to a man who is bearing a child. Remember Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Junior," the movie where he was pregnant and said that merely scooping out the center of a honeydew melon gave him a you know.
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