Waitress

Even in the shadow of its auteur's untimely and tragic death, Adrienne Shelly's Waitress brims with an insistent and occasionally infectious sensibility. And although its pleasures are only mildly satisfying, one leaves the theatre taken with its working-class southern milieu, deft production design, and unwillingness to offer clichéd reassurances about the redemptive nature of love. Its semirural southern locale is rendered unspecific and slightly patronizing by some of its sitcom-level representations, although this twenty-first-century Mayberry, complete with Andy Griffith as an eccentric southern entrepreneur, is rendered beautifully by production designer Ramsay Avery and DP Matthew Irving. Still, while the audience is vaguely intrigued by this tale of diner waitress/pie-making maestro Jenna's (Keri Russell) liberation from a bad marriage to a mean, underdeveloped hick (Jeremy Sisto) and from a desperate affair with a square, Connecticut transplanted physician (Nathan Fillion), all set in motion by an unexpected pregnancy, none of the regional authenticity of a Junebug or an All the Real Girls breaks through in the final film by the gifted Queens native. And you really want it to. It becomes a larger disappointment due to what Shelly gets right, especially her own supporting turn as Jenna's friend and co-worker Dawn and the performance of Cheryl Hines as Becky; the two have some terrific comedic moments as members of Jenna's unsuspecting support group. They too have romantic troubles, which pale in comparison to the abuse evident in Jenna's ordeal with Earl (Sisto), an emotional mutant whose childlike neediness is trumped only by his crackling temper and roiling insecurities.

The deck, however, feels stacked--we never get any sense of Earl's larger emotional issues, and too much is withheld for us to make much sense of the two as a couple. Her feelings of desperation are exacerbated by the unexpected pregnancy, apparently the result of a drunken sexual encounter with Earl. Russell's performance, although competent, never makes Jenna's marital troubles
or her eventual seduction of Dr. Pomatter (Fillion) feel truly credible. She exploits the comedic possibilities of this situation at the safest, most obvious level, so little seems at stake in the film's narrative. The audience wonders why she doesn't end these unfulfilling relationships with more vigor.

In some of the film's more graceful moments, Shelly shows a gift for irony and a light comedic touch that recalls Penny Marshall's work. The interchanges between Griffith and Russell, hinting at autumnal courtship, display a sweetness, reflecting the artful, succulent pies that give Jenna her raison d'etre. This final work by a beloved member of New York's independent film community goes down warmly and smoothly.

                                                             Brandon Harris