I happened to like both films, very much. I too started watching Bella Martha not knowing that it was original and No Reservations was the remake, but after I got over the "Hey, I've seen this movie" shock, I watched with an eye for comparing the two, since I liked the remake so much. The main change was the lack of the father in the American film and the missing Italian father in the German flick. I was somewhat taken aback by the search for Giuseppe and how quickly Martha let Lina go with him, it just seemed like that entire situation was under explained and left me with a "what's all this then?" frame of mind. One can easily see why this was left out of the remake, it was much easier to craft a love story without it.
The character that Martina Gedeck played was way more neurotic than the Catherine Zeta-Jones character, Martha was an emotional mess while Kate was more of control freak.
Both Lina and Zoe were acted with great finesse, there were sometimes when I thought that Abigail Breslin as Zoe was superior and there were other times when I thought that Maxime Foerste as Lina was better. Maxime did look like she had an eating problem.
I thought the scenes with the therapist were more believable in No Reservations, but the last scene in Bella Martha where they discussed why his pie wasn't as good as her's was not in the American film, and IMHO a better way to end the movie than the predictable Hollywood "and they lived happily ever after" ending. It was another instance in the original version of the movie that made the point that the title character was irrational, even to the end.
The restaurant owner in No Reservations was played altogether different, Patricia Clarkston played more of a 'I need this great cook for my place to be good, so I'll just have to put up with her crapola' character, Sibyelle Canonica played it more as a business woman boss. Clarkston's character seemed to have more depth, but that might have been the cultural differences between Germany and Manhattan, though.
Sergio Castellitto was a little bit more believable than pretty boy Aaron Eckhart as an Italian chef, but here too some of the things that each actor did was superior. In No Reservations one could easily see that Zoe's character was smitten by Eckhart, but that followed the script and it worked. In Bella Martha Castellitto played the character a bit more understated, his remarks were wry instead of aimed at being a prop for an overall love story.
If the European original of this movie was not very good, then Hollywood would not have made an American remake of it. And No Reservations was a delightful little love story, that made you think and had a happy ending. Bella Martha had a happy ending too, but it left the audience guessing a little bit at the end.
As good as No Reservations was, with it's great acting and music, Bella Martha was the original and was even better. It's main drawback was that I couldn't understand a word of German.
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