| Martha is the consumate
successful single woman, a celebrated chef at a ritzy
Hamburg restaurant. Work aside, the rest of her life is
a rather routine affair, with passion firmly channelled
into her culinary creations. Everything changes,
however, when her single parent sister dies in an
accident and Martha has to take in her eight year old
niece. Disturbance in Martha’s home life is mirrored by
disruption at work, with the arrival of new recruit
Mario, a charismatic Italian chef whose relaxed manner
endears him to pretty much everyone except Martha.
Firmly in the Big
Night/ Eat Drink Man Woman
tradition, this glossy foodie melodrama is intelligent
mainstream movie-making with strong romantic appeal.
With its attractive female lead, sassy kid and a brace
of unfeasibly compassionate would-be lovers, this nice
looking and easy-on-the-ear film left audiences cheering
when it premiered at the Locarno film festival earlier
this year.
"I wanted for a
long time to make a film about a woman who could cook
but never enjoyed eating," said the director,
Sandra Nettlebeck, after the film’s screening at the
2001 Regius London Film festival. "The food scenes
reveal her failure to communicate with both her staff
and her family."
‘Almost single-handedly accounting
for the film’s emotional impact is the beautiful
Gedeck…Looking natural, as if she were merely lending
herself to the manipulations of script, camera and
editing, Gedeck drifts along in a sensual haze, pulled
this way and that by need, guilt and desire, gradually
transforming to a blossoming and winning woman.’
Emmanuel Levy, Variety
Sandra Hebron
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