Any discussion of Waitress must begin at the end, where the final on-screen credit is a dedication to writer/director/supporting player Adrienne Shelly, who was murdered between the film's completion and its' premiere at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Coming at the end of the confidently made, complex and ultimately uplifting comedy that would clearly have been the veteran indie actress's filmmaking breakthrough, one can't help but be struck by the tragedy.
But there's cause for celebration as well, that she left behind a film bursting at the seams with both humanity and hope, and one that will implore the generations that follow her to make the most of the time they have.
Jenna (Keri Russell) is a deeply unhappy woman, and things get worse from the moment we meet her. Not only is she trapped in a hellish marriage to controlling loser Earl (Jeremy Sisto), but she's now pregnant with his child. She'd been putting aside tips from her job as a waitress at Joe's Pie Diner with a dream to escape through entering and winning a pie bake-off with a $25,000.00 prize.
And Jenna sure can bake, dreaming up new pies all the time for Joe's customers. But Earl keeps her on a tight leash: not letting her have her own car, keeping all her money (that he knows about) for himself, and basically limiting her world to their home and the diner. There, she's got a couple of supportive friends in fellow waitresses Becky (Cheryl Hines) and Dawn (Shelly), and is the only one who can handle the crotchety owner Old Joe (Andy Griffith). Her pregnancy sends her to the new OBGYN in town, Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion). He's nervous around her, but kinder than any man she's known, and soon enough they're having an affair (he's married too). During the nine month pregnancy, Dawn is gradually worn down by a wacky stalker (Eddie Jemison), Becky has an affair of her own with Diner Manager Cal (Lew Temple), and Jenna must confront what might be her final chance to change her life for the better.
I've mentioned before that I'm a big fan of the romantic comedy concept without being a particularly big fan of most romantic comedies. Watching Waitress, it was easy to see why: the plot-programmed robots who inhabit them with their morally repugnant pretzel-twist dilemmas of their own making and New York Fashion Magazine jobs just don't resonate with my definition of romance or even life.
Waitress takes similar material, knocks it down several rungs of the economic ladder, and actually allows us to wonder if any of the film's relationships are healthy or even ethical. At first, it seems like it might be a little too cute, too whimsical, but for every forced smile or quirky proclamation from the characters, there's another moment that allows us to see the very real, very relatable pain beneath the surface. Jenna's inner dialog has her constantly dreaming up and naming new pies (like “Pregnant Miserable Self Pitying Loser Pie”) that are surprisingly well conceived recipe metaphors for her state of mind: any movie could give the pies wacky names, what I loved was the way Shelly drempt up actual recipes that reflected what was going on in her leading lady's heart). She also writes poignant letters to her unborn child, which she hates sight unseen. Both are good devices to let us in on the processes of a woman who doesn't seem given to a lot of normal self-examination. The counterpoint to all this conceptual cutsiness is the positively painful relationship between Jenna and Earl. As played by the outstanding Sisto, he's basically the worst guy ever committed to film: controlling and mean, but also a needy coward, who begs his wife to promise that she will not love the child more than she loves him and is as ready to fall to his knees crying as to threaten violence. I HATED Earl. I wanted to jump through the screen and beat him down. It's a sensational performance.
The rest of the cast is strong as well. It's not so easy to play someone as simultaneously broken and uncomplicated as Jenna, but Russell nails the part. Fillion, who specializes in undercutting macho characters with self-deprecating humor, is a perfect choice as Dr. Pomatter, who is simultaneously the man of her dreams and an unethical cad (which Shelly cleverly manages to keep both off-screen and in plain sight for most of the film). TV legend Griffith came out of retirement to play Old Joe, and it's a great role: salty, selectively senile, regretful but wise. He hits it out of the park, and if this proves to be his final film, it'd be a great note to re-retire on. Hines and Shelly herself made great counterpoints to Russell, both demonstrating their own variations on how woman find themselves trapped in unhappy relationships. Shelly in particular does a tremendous job of conveying Dawn's achingly poor self-esteem.
If there's a downside to Waitress, it's that a male viewer needs pretty good self-esteem of his own to tolerate its' relentlessly negative view of the Y-chromosome. It's not that the male characters don't ring true and don't have their own complexities (I liked the fact that the movie doesn't feel the need to suggest that Pomatter's redeeming characteristics are some sort of act), it's just that there's no doubt in my mind that the film waits to see the gender of Jenna's child before it knows whether it's got a happy ending or not.
But even if the film was taking me and mine out to the woodshed, I can't deny that tears welled in my eyes at that gender biased ending, and at the film in general. Waitress's message is universal: if there's something you love, do what you can with it while you can. Adrienne Shelly loved the movies, and she did something about it. Perhaps her final film will inspire others to follow her lead.
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