Happy Enough: Waitress - A Belated Review

The sad fact about most movies that you see is that they're often entirely predictable fare. Strap yourself in for 90% of horror/thriller/comedy films and you know what you're going to get: your standard A-Z of movie cliches and tropes. This is all well and good; sometimes it's comforting to sit down to something you know and love: horror invades normality, boy meets girl, hero versus villain etc.
And of course when someone comes along with something fresh, with a vision, with a twist on old cliches, it's all the more refreshing to welcome them into our hearts and minds, and follow them wherever they may go, because - to borrow from one such auteur - they had us at hello.
Step forward Chris Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, David Lynch... you all have similar lists.
And so where does this leave us with Waitress? I'm a little late to the party with this movie, I admit, but I couldn't pass up the chance to write a few words about a movie that's so delightful and sweet, and that should have promised a bright future for its writer/director Adrienne Shelley.
Of course, that's not to be. Shelley was murdered before the release of the movie, and if there's anything optimistic to take from such a tragic waste of talent, it's that Waitress is a quirky little gem of a movie, and as lovely a creative legacy that one could ask for.
Jenna (Keri Russell) is a maker of extraordinary pies in her local diner. She's also trapped in a marriage to the worlds worst husband, Earl (Jeremy Sisto) and in a life she didn't expect for herself. When Jenna discovers she is pregnant and her plans to leave Earl are thwarted, she finds herself having an affair with her new doctor (Nathan Fillion).
Waitress lives in the white-picket world America of David Lynch. There are no dancing dwarfs on display here, but it does shares a penchant for stylised dialogue and vivid Blue Velvet photography. With the pie-making (each named with whatever is on Jenna's mind at the time), there's also a similarity with Pushing Daisies; both share that primary colour palette and slight deadpan tilt away from reality.
What Waitress does brilliantly is tease some beautiful performances from its cast.
Keri Russell (whose work I've thus far missed entirely) is endearing and walks the fine line between the sweet absurdities of the script, and the emotional heft that it ultimately delivers. Jeremy Sisto (whom I know ostensibly from Six Feet Under) plays the overbearing and abusive monster of Earl with the sense that his whole personality is a house of cards. Despite having no back story, he invests Earl with a brittle vulnerability. And of course, Nathan Fillion brings the same charm he brings to everything he stars in. How this man isn't a huge star is beyond my comprehension. His subtle, ever so slightly anxious doctor is measured perfectly all the way. Andy Griffith too bears mention with his grumpy pie customer Old Joe, who forms the heart and message of the film: make the leap away from your life if it's not the one you want for yourself.
Everyone is given an affectionate arc, but the core of the movie is Jenna's self-discovery. And it also returns us to the start. What begins as a simple charming romantic comedy ends as something else. Self- discovery, but with the child Jenna has convinced herself she doesn't want, and not with that seemingly perfect other man.
There are a few places where the movie loses its footing near the end, but they feel almost as if they might have been decisions made in the absence of its writer/director (although I could be wrong).
But they're slight misgivings. Waitress manages to transcend the simple romantic comedy with a lot of warmth and a beautiful sense of whimsy. But it's also laced with a sense of sadness; there's a particular sense of poignancy to the final scene of Jenna walking away into her future with Shelley's real life little daughter. One less auteur in the world.

Jenna: Cal, are you happy? I mean, when you call yourself a happy man, do you really mean it?
Cal: You ask a serious question, I'll give you a serious answer: Happy enough. I don't expect much. I don't get much, I don't give much. I generally enjoy whatever comes along. That's my answer for you, summed up for your feminine consideration. I'm happy enough.