Movie Log: Mostly Martha

I never do things the easy way, so instead of seeing the American movie No Reservations (which apparently is decent), I tracked down the German movie it was a remake of, Mostly Martha.

The plot is familiar from the ads for the newer movie: Martha Klein is the chef at a fancy Hamburg restaurant, entirely focused on cooking to the exclusion of everything else in her life. (The restaurant's owner, Frida, even has ordered Martha to see a therapist, but Martha spends that time talking about food.) But then her sister dies in a car wreck on the way to visit her, and Martha's eight-year-old niece Lina, herself damaged by her mother's death, is left in Martha's care.

Frida, trying to help, hires another chef to help out Martha. (The kitchen may already be underhanded, and one of Martha's assistants is going out on maternity leave -- so this isn't entirely about Martha and Lina.) The new chef is Mario, a only mildly stereotypical Italian, who says he greatly admires Martha's cooking. She, of course, reacts as if he's her replacement, and goes frosty and reserved.

And then...well, the disc I had from Netflix was scratched, so I lost about ten minutes of the movie in the middle. But I suspect everyone can guess how this ends -- with a new family forming, and everybody becoming a bit happier and more human.

I hesitate to make a critical judgement on a movie that was missing its middle, so I won't. I enjoyed what I saw of Mostly Martha, and I expect the movie without missing pieces was even better than the way I saw it. (And now The Wife and I are contemplating seeing No Reservations to see how it measures up.)