Yes, I’m a little behind the times. This film came out 2 years ago, and I’m talking about it now. Well, that’s the price you pay when you have two small children and no babysitting budget to speak of. Thank god for Netflix, so we can at least drop a name or two at the odd cocktail party. Do people even have cocktail parties anymore? That they refer to as such? Essentially, it’s just a bunch of folks in a room getting hammered, so isn’t that really just a frat party in a fancy dress? But I digress.
Waitress. It’s a gem of a film, one that manages to hold all kinds of opposing stylistic forces inside of itself. It is broad and subtle, campy and utterly real, hilarious and scary, often all in the same scene. There isn’t a weak performance in the bunch, and I think a lot of the credit goes to Shelly. She must have had a steady (yet firm and resolute) hand in guiding these actors, given all of the unexpected choices made. She managed to get major buy-in from the actors, and that means creating an atmosphere of absolute trust, and that ability is a rare one.
There are so many moments inside of this film that you never, ever see on the screen. The entire relationship between Keri Russell’s waitress and her fresh-off-the-boat-from-Connecticut gynocologist is built on these moments. It’s a monument to cringing, unavoidable, yet somehow sexy awkwardness. Their affair feels inevitable and out of their control, and occupies this odd space outside the moral universe. You neither judge nor celebrate their affair, you don’t root for the end or desperately pray that they’ll end up together, but you are completely engaged in it, nonetheless. How did Shelly pull that off? It’s amazing to me.
Her brutal murder was tragic and awful for so many plainly human reasons, but also because her utterly unique voice as a filmmaker has been silenced way too soon.
See this film if you haven’t. There’s nothing else like it.
