VA - No Reservations - Music From The Motion Picture Soundtrack (2007)

Nowhere in the advertising or publicity materials for the 2007 American romantic comedy No Reservations is there an acknowledgement that it is based on the 2002 German film Mostly Martha. This is a common practice, of course; Hollywood loves to remake movies from overseas, but rarely admits to doing so, except in the small print. You might say, however, that there is an implied credit in the musical content of No Reservations, as replicated in this "music from the motion picture" soundtrack album, at least in the sense that most of it is European music, specifically, opera arias sung by the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Renata Tebaldi, Joan Sutherland, Carlo Bergonzi, and Joseph Calleja. The setting may have been moved to New York City, but the musical influence has remained across the Atlantic, except for a couple of brief excerpts from Philip Glass' background score; neo-traditional pop singer Michael Bublé's cover of the Anglicized 1954 Mexican song "Sway"; and, incongruously, pop/rocker Liz Phair's "Count on My Love" (no doubt appearing only during the end credits, when almost everyone has left the theater anyway). Continuing the European dominance are some more contemporary pieces, Conrad Pope's "Truffles and Quail," Paolo Conte's "Via con Me," and Ray Gelato's "Mambo Gelato." All of that doesn't quite add up to a specific reference to the film's real origins, but it does provide a distinctly European flavor to a film as much about food as it is about love.~ Review by William Ruhlmann