Waitress
If you have heard anything about this movie, it’s the tragic story of the sudden death of the writer/director costar just before the film premiered at Sundance. Hopefully, you will hear more about her last work once this movie is seen by more people. Admittedly, it is difficult at first to separate that sad knowledge from a pure appreciation for the movie, but by the end you are thinking about the story she left behind and mourning the movies she will not get to make.
Former TV puff-ball Keri Russell puts on her Grown-Up-Actress pants as the titular waitress, a pie prodigy in a small down, stuck in a terrible domestic pickle: carrying the baby of her mean old snake of a husband (Jeremy Sisto). Russell is sweet and spicy steel in this role, accomplishing the feat of portraying a strong woman who is still trapped by her own weaknesses. Her dreams are always bubbling on the back burner, but reality keeps her from sampling what her heart most needs.
Her waitress friends (Shelly and Cheryl Hines) are great complements to her character and delicious characters in their own right. Their combined personalities get them through the week, but they, realists and dreamers all, each carry their own burdens home at night. The pie shop’s owner, Joe (an extra twinkly terrific Andy Griffith) drops in occasionally, threatening to be a clichéd character but always managing to elude it.
Shelly keeps the Fried Green Tomato treacle at bay and lets the natural charm of Russell drive the story. Russell expresses herself in pies, all sorts, creative and emotional and hilarious, while subsuming every part of her self and needs at home with Sisto. Long full-face shots of her give her lots of chances to broadcast her inner self to us, her invisible audience. Like Jennifer Aniston in The Good Girl, you come to believe how someone so beautiful and cool as Russell could end up wedged into life’s corner just so. Russell will not let herself be rescued, a trail I am sure I (were I in her shoes) could never aspire to, and she is the more alluring for her stubbornness on this point. She balances her guts with her weakness so delicately, you wriggle in your seat to keep up.
Enter new local OB/GYN Nathan Fillion (Serenity), who will solidify his adorable leading man status forever with this role. His scenes with Russell crackle with old-school electricity, and he breathes hope into her every pore. Even his moral ambiguities are forgiven with his endearing charm and sincerity. Fillion is the whimsical berries in her smooth, trembling custard, and I found myself clapping my hands in pleasure whenever they were on screen together.
Jeremy Sisto takes his Elton from Clueless sleazebag act to the next logical step without making his character cartoonish. He’s more a selfish, thoughtless child than a monster. One scene, no two, I worried he would cross the line into real bad-man, but he always teetered perfectly in the thankless role of the undesireable.
It’s a lovely, melancholy, funny movie – I hope you like it as much as I did.
MPAA Rating PG-13
Release date 5/11/07
Time in minutes 104
Director Adrienne Shelly
Studio Fox Searchlight
