2007 Movie
Dir. Adrienne Shelly · United States of America · English
A quirky comedy celebrating friendship, love, and pies
Jenna is a young woman living a rather unhappy life in a town in the American South. The highlight of her days is inventing and baking pies at the diner where she works, giving them names like the “I Hate My Husband Pie”. Her life, however, seems to have hit an unpleasant dead-end: as her pie suggests, she no longer loves her chauvinistic pig of a husband and, as if that wasn’t enough, she’s pregnant with his child.
Waitress is about one woman’s determination to dig through the sourness of life in the hopes of finding a layer of sweetness underneath. Premiering only months after lead actress Adrienne Shelly’s tragic death at the age of 40, Waitress features wonderful performances that make for a delicious film, with the right ingredients to hold everything together.
A small town waitress stuck in a lousy marriage finds love when an exciting out-of-towner enters her life.
"Shelly deftly achieves a tone pitched between fantasy and reality, its levity belying an astute and humane study of an unhappy relationship steeped in inertia."
— Shauna Lyon
"A simple tale of a girl's determination to dig through the bitterness, and find a layer of sweetness just waiting to be enjoyed."
— Monisha Rajesh
Spirit Awards
1 nom
Sundance
1 nom
Nat. Board of Review
1 win
Sonia Botsarova is a film and culture writer who explores the intersections between cinema and geography in her work on A Reel Trip and Medium. Her writing focuses on world cinema, with particular interest in the cinemas of Central Asia and underrepresented regions.
YES. one of my faves!