Bella Martha

Tales of Loaves and Fishes

This might be the nicest movie ever made. There's plenty of drama, but no hint of a bad guy or an evil empire, just the vicissitudes of life that befall even the saints among us.

The movie starts out in profound loneliness and quickly bottoms out in the depths of human loss, then spends the next 90 minutes slowly, but surely, crawling out to the authentic happiness we humans can only experience in a huge, well-fed, and faintly chaotic (in this case, German-Italian) family.

The language the movie uses to express its wealth of humanity is entirely the language of food. Martha, played brilliantly by the delicate German actress Martina Gedeck, is a superb French chef who can't seem to carry a conversation about anything else. Even her therapist is fair game for her amazing flights of culinary fantasy. Her professional kitchen is as creative as any we've ever seen, yet like her life, it's strangely incomplete—her yin missing its yang. And everyone but Martha sees it.

When the child played by Maxime Foerste and the Italian sous-chef played by Sergio Castellitto invade Martha's world, even she has to admit eventually that they are exactly what she needed. And it’s that growing realization—again, expressed through the delights of food and cooking—that forms the backbone of this wonderful story.

Most of the movie takes place in a gathering winter in downtown Hamburg, Germany—hardly near the top of anyone's travel list. Yet the bleakness of the cityscape contrasts nicely with the chaotic heat of the kitchen and the growing warmth of the plot.

Neither of us can remember exactly how many times we've watched this film. Not enough.

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Find the movie (In German with English subtitles) by its English title, Mostly Martha, at IMDB. The movie was later ripped off into an American copy, No Reservations—not a bad film, but entirely lacking in the grounded authenticity of the original.

Watch the American-voiced trailer on YouTube:

And listen to the principal theme song, “Via con me” by the incomparable Italian singer, Paolo Conte, along with beautiful dance moves from Fred and Ginger (cleverly put together on YouTube by the contributor Agis Knee Cole).

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