Movie Review

Bavaria Film, starring: Martina Gedeck (Martha), Maxine Foerste (Lina), Sergio Castellito (Mario), English subtitles, 106 mins, 2002.

This is a "food flic" in the great tradition of Babette's Feast, Chocolat and Big Night. Preparing and savouring food is a metaphor for relationships and life itself.

Martha is Executive Chef at Lido a very high end restaurant in some port city in Germany. She describes herself as 'precise' but in reality she is driven, obsessive and very up tight. The story begins with her in therapy where she has been sent by her employer. She spends her time talking about recipes and techniques in preparing intricate dishes. She states that she has no idea why her boss has sent her. We get an idea why when we see a couple of spectacular clashes with customers who question her preparation of certain dishes.

Into the midst of this high pressure life comes Lina, her eight year old niece whose mother has just been killed in a car accident. Martha is devastated but bravely fronts up to taking care of Lina. In grief, Lina is uncommunicative, withholding and self contained. Martha prepares delicious and nutritious meals that Lina refuses to eat. She has to take her to the restaurant in the evenings and in the mornings they are always late for school. The restaurant owner brings in another cook, Mario who is footloose, fun loving and happy, the opposite of Martha who views him, naturally as a threat to her position. Martha reacts badly by being withholding, self contained, uncommunicative and refusing to eat food that he has prepared! In fact Mario knows of Martha's reputation and is honoured to be able to work with her and learn from her.

Lina's father lives in Italy and she is probably the result of a summer fling. Martha, however, promises to find him and with Mario's help sends a letter telling him of her sister's death and the existence of Lina. In the mean time Mario has managed to con Lina into eating spaghetti when she hangs around the kitchen. One night after Martha missed work because of a crisis at the school Mario shows up at the apartment with a tureen of soup that he has prepared. There follows one of the best love scenes that I have viewed in movies. Mario feeds her spoonfuls of soup while she guesses the ingredients and savours the tastes and textures. It is wonderfully understated and very sensual.

Just at the point that Martha, Lina and Mario are becoming a happy little family there's a knock at the door and Lina's father shows up. Lina's dream of escape from her "wicked" aunt comes true at the worst possible time. However, she bravely goes off to Italy to start a new life. Sometime later, Martha has a raging fight with a customer, quits her job and enlists the help of Mario to get Lina back. As they drive to Italy Martha expresses some doubt that Lina would return and Mario says "Why wouldn't she jump at the chance to leave warm and sunny Italy for cold and grey Germany?" Then he says "Lina really loves you, you know".

Here Mario shifts from being merely the love interest in the story to Christ Figure who both expresses unconditional acceptance of both Lina and Martha and then states for Martha what she cannot see herself because of her own need for precision and order. Precision and order have been the substitute for her self acceptance. In this brief scene in the car on the way to Italy Mario rephrases Paul Tillich's marvelous phrase that is a modern statement of the meaning of Grace. "You are accepted. Accept your acceptance."