Bella Review

Bella
An international football player's career is brought to an abrupt end, forcing him to work as a chef in his brother's Mexican restaurant. Whist there he notices Nina, a waitress who has just discovered she is pregnant.

by Patrick Peters |
Published on
Release Date:

01 Oct 2010

Running Time:

92 minutes

Certificate:

PG

Original Title:

Bella

Its difficult to fathom why this slight, saccharine weepie has secured a UK release four years after it was made. The central non-romance between disgraced footballer-turned-chef Eduardo Verástegui and pregnant waitress Tammy Blanchard meanders through the kind of day in New York that only existed in 1940s Christmas movies, while the various subplots involving his parents and adopted siblings are as negligible as the backstory anecdotes that Verástegui and Blanchard periodically share. Moreover, the camerawork and editing contribute to a stylistic hotchpotch that only serves to emphasise how emotionally manipulative, vacuously elliptical and relentlessly sentimental the film is.

An overly sentimental film that lacks believability and feels it was made 40 years ago rather than four years ago.
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