Blog 3

In the film Mostly Martha, food plays an important part in the story, but what plays a bigger part is the power of love, both family love as well as romantic love. In Mostly Martha, Martha is a talented chef, second-best around. She takes her job, as well as the quality of her food, very seriously. In the beginning, we even see her arguing with a customer who was complaining over their dish. However, while Martha is a very talented cook, she doesn't have anyone to cook for personally, and she doesn't eat much herself.

This changes, however, when her sister gets into a car crash and doesn't survive, leaving her niece, Lina, without someone to watch over her. This causes Martha to take in Lina. Lina is very distraught, having just lost her mother at a very young age. Martha tries time and time again to comfort Lina by cooking for her, but Lina does not accept and doesn't eat for days. From this, we can see that food itself isn't powerful, but from whom it's prepared by and with what love does it gain its value. Later in the film, we see Mario act kindly around Lina, talking to her and convince her to eat some spaghetti. The fact that its spaghetti is important here. Since she has Italian blood from her father, she enjoys Italian food. This continues into the dinner party scene. Where Mario and Lina cook for Martha instead. They sit on the floor around the food and don't even use plates. The food just brings them closer together. 

There's also another interesting scene that comes a little later, where Mario is feeding Martha some soup to see if she can taste the individual ingredients, he kisses her while she still has her blindfold on. This is an example of food and love being used interchangably.