Movie Review - 'Bella'

Bella

Starring Eduardo Versategui and Tammy Blanchard
Directed by Alejandro Gomez Monteverde
Rated PG-13

An undeniably crowd pleasing film, Bella captures the journeys of lives you never stop to consider and finds the beauty and the heartbreak in them. Its populist appeal is evident by a People’s Choice award at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival, but Bella is more than just a heartwarming story of a talented chef who slaves away in his brother’s restaurant and a pregnant waitress walking on thin ice.

However, don’t think of the story as just some hokey greeting card about a desperate man and a lonely woman falling into each other’s arms; though the story might seem rather ordinary at first, when it finds its depth, Bella really comes together. Jose (Eduardo Versategui) often comes to the defense of Nina (Tammy Blanchard), who is habitually late for her shift. The friendship that develops is sweet and quickly runs deep. Writer-director Alejandro Gomez Monteverde allows our connection to Bella to work through these two characters alone. There’s no real villain, no raging conflict in every scene.

For the gamble to work requires not just a disarming script but also intensely believable performances; Bella is powered by the emotional portrayal of Broadway vet and Emmy winner Blanchard, who shows not just her range but also that of her character. She’s thoughtful one minute, impulsive the next, overcome by sadness and then overwhelmed with gratitude.

But even before we become drawn in by Blanchard and even before the script goes about its quiet business so well, we’re swept up in the rich, colorful assembly of every scene in Bella. Cinematographer Andrew Cadalego doesn’t have many credits in that role, but he does know color, recently working as a layout artist on Ratatouille. Vibrant yellows underscore the passion of one neighborhood, cool blues the work-a-day feel of the next.

Smaller films like this tend to get overlooked for precisely that reason: There’s no machine cranking out TV ads, the actors are unknown to movie audiences and the story can’t be told in a fast-paced trailer. Bella is one small film worth blockbuster hype.