Ein verlockendes Angebot

If you think "Bella Martha" (recently remade as "No Reservations") was lame, think again. As kitchen drama goes, "Verlockendes Angebot" hits rock bottom. Christiane Paul, Devid Striesow, and Richy Müller are among the most versatile and likable contemporary German screen actors, but they are wasted on on this movie's mediocre script. For starters, we are supposed to believe sometime Vogue cover girl Christiane Paul is a klutzy Cinderella type from Bohemia, wearing wool socks in her strappy sandals and dazzling spoiled Westerners with her home style cooking. At all turns, the script takes the path of least resistance and biggest cliché. Incoherently, the score consists almost exclusively of mellow Norah Jones numbers (rather than the rustic polka you would expect). The Eastern German landscape is beautifully shot, but the saccharine story simply fails to make you care.