They are startled when Chef Didier pays more attention to the woman dining by herself than to their self-important table. At his table are his mistress ( Alicia Witt), a senator ( Giancarlo Esposito) and a congressman ( Michael Nouri). Visiting this hotel is another party, consisting of a retail tycoon named Matthew Kragen ( Timothy Hutton), who owns the chain of giant stores including the one Georgia resigned from in New Orleans. My wife and I were in Karlovy Vary four years ago for the film festival, and, like Georgia, we did a double-take when we discovered that the correct pronunciation of the hotel rhymes with 'poop.' Yes, but it is a magnificent edifice, and soon Georgia is walking eagerly into the dining room to order - well, everything on the menu. A stream runs down the center of the town, and at the top of the little valley is the Grand Hotel Pupp, where Georgia checks in. Its hotels are high and wide but not deep, because steep mountain walls rise close behind them. Karlovy Vary is a jewel box of a spa town 90 minutes outside of Prague.

That's where her hero, Chef Didier ( Gerard Depardieu), rules the kitchen, and she decides to go out in style, eating everything on the menu and treating herself to all the services of the spa and the ski slopes. Her HMO won't cover the expensive treatment, which might not work anyway, and so Georgia throws caution to the wind, cashes in her 401-K, and buys a ticket to Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic. The need for dieting comes to a sudden halt when she receives bad news: She has three or four weeks to live.

Big rich town queen latifah