THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 17, 1994 TAG: 9412160091
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E7 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
THE AMERICAN distributors of ``Martha and I,'' quite correctly, bill it as ``a love story for grown-ups.''
As such, the film is a reminder that mature people - even people with bodies not faintly similar to those of bathing beauties or hard-body surfers - also have romances. The two central characters are a middle-aged obstetrician and his hefty (make that fat) housekeeper. They don't so much ``fall'' in love as they grow into it.
``Martha and I'' is a refreshingly human and humane film in that it deals openly with characters not often seen in movies.
Marianne Saegebrecht, the ``full-figured'' force who scored so markedly with American audiences in ``Bagdad Cafe,'' has the kind of open, honest face that suggests she is a natural rather than a crafted actress. Hollywood can't figure out what to do with her (giving her only a small role in ``War of the Roses''). She is the kind of woman you'd trust with your most private secrets - a kind of earth mother to us all. Here, she plays Martha, the German housekeeper to a Jewish doctor in Czechoslovakia. She lives to serve. She loves to grovel.
Then, on one fateful night, the doctor comes home early and finds his young wife in bed with a younger man. He throws her out - although she does get a sports car and other ample rewards.
Contrary to all logic, he proposes to Martha, the unabashedly ``plain'' servant. He takes her to the dentist and the hairdresser as she is carefully transformed into the wife of a prosperous, upper-class man. Of course, his family - four sisters - is predictably upset about the marriage.
The doctor is played, with great compassion, by the famed French actor Michel Piccoli.
In the early scenes, the film threatens to become yet another coming-of-age drama as seen through the eyes of young Emil, the doctor's horny nephew.
Indeed, the coming of age of young Jewish boys is the predominant, and increasingly repetitive, theme of the current Virginia Festival of Jewish Film. It was the theme of both the fluffy ``A La Mode'' and the more-charming ``The Slingshot.''
Since both actors assigned to play young Emil are not very appealing, it is altogether pleasant that this film shifts its concern to more mature, and well-developed, characters.
``Martha and I'' makes its point in harrowing and frightening terms, by keeping the oncoming threat of Nazism in the background. As such, it joins ``The Garden of the Finzi-Continis'' and ``Cabaret'' as meaningful films set in an era when good people looked the other way until it was too late.
Jiri Weiss, the director and writer of ``Martha and I,'' will be at the theater for the debut screening tonight at 7. The humanism of his film makes it a project of which he can be proud. (A second screening is set for Sunday at 4 p.m.) ILLUSTRATION: Jiri Weiss, the director and writer of ``Martha and I,'' will be
at the Naro in Norfolk tonight at 7.
MOVIE REVIEW
``Martha and I''
Cast: Marianne Saegebrecht, Michel Piccoli, Vaclov Chalupa,
Ondrej Vetchy
Director and Writer: Jiri Weiss
MPAA rating: (Not rated)
Mal's rating:
Locations: Naro Expanded Cinema in Norfolk, Saturday at 7 p.m.,
Sunday at 4 p.m. as a part of the Virginia Festival of Jewish Film.
by CNB