Waitress

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Written by Katie Naylon   
Monday, 18 June 2007

"If only life were as easy as pie..." calls the tag line from Adrienne Shelly's Waitress. But with pie names like "I Can't Have No Affair Because It's Wrong And I Don't Want Earl To Kill Me Pie" it's hard to argue with the "life's not so easy" sentiment of the baker.

It's like falling into a dream when Jenna (Keri Russell) ties her apron and begins to sift flour.

Quotation It's like falling into a dream when Jenna (Keri Russell) ties her apron and begins to sift flour. Quotation
She does everything you want your friendly, impossibly gorgeous and pregnant waitress to do. She magically bakes pies at a pie diner that looks like the little place off every highway in America. She chats with her co-workers, Dawn (Cheryl Hines), a professional at serving up the backhanded compliment, and shares make-up with the shyly sweet Becky (played by Shelly, who in a tragic turn of events was murdered in the fall of 2006, just a few months shy of seeing the film screen at Sundance.) Of course, Jenna befriends the cantankerous old owner of the diner who comes in every afternoon to eat a slice of pie and read horoscopes aloud.

For a moment, it feels like The Good Girl but something about the lighting, cast, and script, saves Russell from being a depressed Jennifer Aniston. She manages to stay insightful as her controlling husband, played by Jeremy Sisto, better known perhaps for his performance as the high school bad guy in Clueless, grinds her gears over everything she does wrong--before forcing her to apologize.

Then the simplicity of life for this waitress is shaken up by an unwanted pregnancy, and the taste of excitement comes in the shape of a sexy, albeit married, gynecologist (Nathan Fillion). The darker undercurrents of this movie settle around the fear of a dangerous husband, but despite this, within all the sweetness of this film, there is a tinny aftertaste in the casual acceptance of infidelity as the marriages in the film crumble, as if their foundations, too, were made of pastry.

This movie calls out to the suffering in every dead end job, relationship or town.
Quotation This movie calls out to the suffering in every dead end job, relationship or town. Quotation
Shelly's final film, with all of its candy color and taste, shows us we don't have to give up. The bonds between women as friends or mother and child are the staple ingredients in every recipe. Mistakes can be made and forgiven. There is always a new batch to start over again if you make the time.
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Katie Naylon
About the author:
Contributing Critic. Katie Anne Naylon, a personal essayist, journalist, and copywriter based in Brooklyn. I'm influenced by Tudor England, two door sports cars, and Christian Dior, too.
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