Two things, no three, distinguish this film. One, Martina Gedeck's (Martha) face. Two, cuisine. Three, messed up people are people, too.

Sadly, Martha Gedeck is someone we starved Americans have missed out on for years. She is one of a handful of actresses with a face that can communicate everything. Like Patricia Arquette, Ingrid Bergman, and precious few others, Martha Gedeck has somehow gained sufficient control over her facial expressions that she can warm, terrify, or break hearts without a word. She is extraordinary and utterly winning in her role as a seriously neurotic chef.

My kitchen is about as wide as a crepe and as long as a vienna sausage. The two of us can cook together but only if one of us hasn't eaten in a month. The kitchen in Mostly Martha is huge. The food is exquisite. It is, I am sure, more a function of my inability to learn more than "pommes frittes" that caused my culinary experience in Germany (this is a German film surprisingly full of air and light) to compare so poorly with the one I saw on screen.

The film opens with Martha in a therapy session. She is telling the therapist what sort of mushrooms work with pigeon and which don't. When he asks her why she comes to therapy she answers, "my boss made it a condition of my work." Martha is a mess. She slams a bloody piece of meat on the table of an unsuspecting patron when he dares to suggest she overcooked his rare steak. She doesn't go anywhere but work and home. She has problems with authority and anger. She regularly hides in the walk-in cooler when things get too stressful. The writer/director (Sandra Nettelbeck) makes her neuroticism an endearing quality and not an object of our ridicule. A difficult maneuver but deftly executed.