by rick grant rickgrant01@comcast.net
A Rated PG-13 107 min
The fact that writer/director Adrienne Shelly was brutally raped and murdered three months before this film was premiered at Sundance plays into the its tragic mystique. However, if this tragedy had not happened, the movie would have still wowed audiences at Sundance with its overall brilliance.
Indeed, the film will be Shelly’s lasting memorial. Audiences will view the film and think that the world was robbed of a major talent, who would have gone on to write and direct many other noteworthy projects. Incredibly, we live in a violent world in which these heinous crimes happen every day.
Shelly’s story involves Jenna, (Keri Russell) a waitress and gourmet pie maker who is trapped in a bad marriage and is secretly trying to save enough money to get out of it. Then, she gets pregnant and her sense of desperation turns to hopelessness. Her husband, Earl (Jeremy Sisto) is an abusive, controlling lout, who makes her promise that she will not love the baby more than him. At that point in the story, women in the audience will seethe with loathing for this archetype dunderhead.
Every day Jenna invents a new pie with creative names like “I Don’t Want to Have Earl’s Baby Pie.” Her delicious home made pies made this restaurant a popular haunt in the small Southern town. Her colleagues and friends are Becky (Cheryl Hines) and Dawn, (Adrienne Shelly) who have their own problems. The restaurant is owned by a cranky old entrepreneur Old Joe (Andy Griffith). Jenna is the only waitress who can get along with him.
Jenna figures that getting pregnant was dumb, but she is against abortion. So she has to reconcile the life growing inside her. At first, she calls it a parasite but when she sees its little heartbeat on the ultrasound, she begins to change her mind. Her hormones are raging and when she sees the handsome doctor Pomatter (Nathan Fillion) she can’t resist her urge to jump his bones, although both the doctor and Jenna know its wrong. Thus, Jenna begins a self destructive sexual affair with Dr. Pomatter, who is married to a woman doctor who is doing her residency at the local hospital.
Shelly’s savvy orchestration of the scenes and the pacing avoids melodrama in favor of humor and sensitivity. Jenna wants out of her bad marriage, but she is scared of her violent husband. Most of the time, she placates him to keep him calm. Having the baby has greatly complicated her already complex situation, but she continues to make pies and hope that she can figure out how to break free of Earl’s tyranny.
Meanwhile, Jenna continues her tawdry affair with her doctor. They make a lame attempt to break it off but every time they see each other they end up having sex. If Earl found out he might kill her and the doctor. Old Joe advises her that life’s too short to be in an unhappy marriage. But, she doesn’t have enough money saved to leave.
Yes, older viewers will think back to the old sitcom Alice, but Shelly’s story is mutli-dimensioinal, which upgrades the material from falling into sitcom mediocrity. When Jenna’s friends give her a baby book to write letters to her baby, Jenna is able to write down her inner most thoughts that help her rationalize her predicament. In her letters to her baby, she doesn’t blame the baby, but she wonders about how she will react when the baby is born.
Interestingly, since Shelly wasn’t happy about her own pregnancy, her letters to her baby have double meaning to the story and to her own life. Shelly felt that taking care of a baby would stifle her creativity as a writer/filmmaker, but as viewers learn in her movie, she works out that fear in her insightful thoughts in her letters. Now that she is dead, it takes on a deeper meaning in the context of her film.
Keri Russell’s exemplary performance as Jenna is full of humor and insight into Jenna’s psyche. Toward the end of her pregnancy, Jenna sees a light at the end of the tunnel, in that the baby may be a wonderful asset to her new life, if she can muster up the courage to dump Earl. This is the key to Shelly’s motivations in creating her alter-ego character, Jenna–to work out her own demons. Shelly’s script, direction, and Keri Russell’s performance are Oscar-worthy. The film is building quite a buzz after it opening worldwide last weekend. It will be on my top ten list for 2007.
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EU Critic’s Choice Awards
