MOSTLY MARTHA (Drei Sterne) ---------------------------
Martha Klein (Martina Gedeck, "Der Bewegte Mann") is Hamburg's celebrity chef,
revered by her customers, tolerated by Lido restaurant owner Frida (Sibylle Canonica, "Beyond Silence"), who sends her to a shrink (August Zirner) for her rigid obsessiveness. When Martha's sister is killed in a car accident, she's left to care for her 8 year old niece, Lina (Maxime Foerste), until she can locate Lina's long-gone Italian father. With her routine thrown into disarray, Frida hires Italian chef Mario (Sergio Castellitto, "The Starmaker")
to help in the kitchen. Tempers flare, sparks leap and palates sparkle in "Mostly Martha."
Working from her own script, Sandra Nettelbeck makes her feature directorial debut with a souffle concocted from such films as "Big Daddy," "Big Night" and "Italian for Beginners." While its premise is wholly unoriginal, Gedeck and Castellitto are charming and young Foerste is refreshingly ordinary.
Martha and Frida act like "Big Night's" Primo and Secondo, with cuisine and commerce always at odds. Martha's a prima donna whose demand for perfection overwhelms her life and obscures the problems of those, like her heavily pregnant sous chef Lea (Katja Studt), around her. Lina's arrival completely upsets Martha's life. Ironically she can't get the girl to eat, nor does she succeed in getting her to school on time. Only when she brings the girl to work do things begin to look up.
The film's at its best in the kitchen, where Castellitto's Mario provides pasta and joie de vivre. Threatened Martha, who literally cools off in the kitchen's freezer, begins to warm up when Mario's spaghetti psychology entices Lina to eat. Once the threesome are established as a makeshift family of sorts, Lina's dad arrives to bring her home to Italy and life decisions must be made.
"Mostly Martha" (the film's German title translates to "Three Stars") takes its cue from every film that's ever found a single adult suddenly become responsible for a child. The cold climate/warm climate analogies of "Italian for Beginners" are present everywhere, from the restaurant's name to Lina's paternity. The cliched caring neighbor is present in the form of Sam (Ulrich Thomsen, "Celebration"), an architect whose romantic timing with Martha is off, but whose babysitting availability is always on.
Gedeck, who resembles Rachel Weisz, acts confident in the kitchen (the actors all attended cooking school before filming) and tentative outside of it. She's funny when upbraiding a disgruntled customer, exasperating when colliding with Mario and touching when fighting for Lina. She makes the audience want Martha to win. Castellitto is a teddy bear bearing comfort food who brings music into Martha's sterile kitchen. Foerste, in her film debut, is a real little girl pained by her mother's death. Studt is a nice presence as the mother to be in chef's whites. Canonica brings the only sour note, reacting too harshly to her chef's foibles.
Nettelbeck's debut is likeable thanks to its cast, its cuisine and its quirky tunes.
B-
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