Mostly Martha

Martha is head chef at a restaurant in Hamburg. She is faultless at the work; nobody in the kitchen can contradict her and if a customer dislikes a dish she comes out and argues. There is nothing else in her life. She goes to therapy and describes recipes there too. Then her sister dies in an accident. Eight year old Lina is left to her. The child will not eat. In the same period a new cook arrives at the restaurant; Mario is Italian, loud, and plays music in the kitchen. Martha is pressed from two sides at once. Sandra Nettelbeck writes and directs. Martina Gedeck plays Martha, Maxime Foerste plays Lina and Sergio Castellitto plays Mario; August Zirner is in the cast. It is a German, Italian, Austrian and Swiss co-production. The film opened in 2001 and reached a wide audience in Europe. Hollywood remade it in 2007 and that version became better known. The matter it treats is control; Martha runs everything in the kitchen and can run nothing outside it. The narrative shows the grief from the child's side too, and Lina's refusal to eat is at its centre. The cooking scenes are detailed; preparation and service are given as though in real time. The narrative does not hurry its romantic line. Martina Gedeck does not play the character for sympathy and the narrative is in no hurry to soften her. The ending is too tidy and resolves the tension it built too easily. Its limit is predictability; the premise is familiar and the ending where expected. Who it is for: viewers who like European drama and films about cooking. Who it is not for: it is conventional, slow, and the ending easy.