Washington Post by Ann Hornaday
A sweet, even delectable diversion from the more explosive cinematic fare of the season.
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Germany, Italy, Austria · 2001
Rated PG · 1h 46m
Director Sandra Nettelbeck
Starring Martina Gedeck, Maxime Foerste, Sergio Castellitto, August Zirner
Genre Romance, Drama, Comedy
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Martha, the head chef at a chic restaurant, dedicates all her time to her job. But Martha's solitary life is shaken when a fateful accident brings her sister's eight-year-old daughter, Lina, to her doorstep.
Washington Post by Ann Hornaday
A sweet, even delectable diversion from the more explosive cinematic fare of the season.
The German reserve and Italian extroversion are in just the right balance. The movie exists on a tantalizing border -- and I don't mean Switzerland.
Becomes precisely the sort of film its elements demand. As tearful goodbyes and joyful montage sequences set to lite-jazz saxophoning take over, "neatly winsome" trumps "messy drama" yet again.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Liam Lacey
It is, in short, a compendium of clichés, yet with a presentation that makes the familiar seem remarkably warm and fresh.
Los Angeles Times by Manohla Dargis
It's a drag how Nettelbeck sees working women -- or at least this working woman -- for whom she shows little understanding; there's a puritan, even punitive, cast to the way she sees her character, whose pathology she digs at with the tenacity of a truffle hound.
Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov
There's more at work in this gorgeous and affecting picture than simple culinary sex appeal.
New York Post by Megan Lehmann
The plot is thin as consomme, and the thudding score is distracting, but the heartfelt storytelling and Michael Bertl's disarming cinematography make this a food film to savor.
Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan
Sweet without being saccharine and funny without being forced, the closely observed romantic comedy treats the culinary arts as a metaphor for personal healing.
Nettelbeck is a sharp observer of life's surprises, and Gedeck has an appraising, intelligent beauty. Her Martha is like the film: tart on the outside, sweet on the inside, with a delectable aftertaste.
Portland Oregonian by Shawn Levy
A feel-good movie that doesn't think it needs to rub people's noses in the happy stuff to get its points across or eliminate all the disturbing shades to make a uniformly glowing whole.
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