Saturday

You may have heard of the film coming out this week called Waitress. Its release is strangely muted. Having seen the trailer I can tell you it appears to follow fairly conventional lines. An independent woman is struggling in a marriage, finds out she's pregnant, and then falls in love with her doctor. She works in a diner and has several feisty female friends. The most original element of the film seems to be that she makes exceptional pies and gives them ironic titles, such as 'I want to have an affair but the bond of marriage is too sacred for me Pie'. So, as you are sensing, this all sounds schmaltzy and cutesy and annoying. What is giving it more than usual, and strangely muted, press is that its writer, director, and actress, Adrienne Shelley, was murdered in her home by an intruder after making it. Undoubtedly people will see this movie because of this added sadness, or tragedy, or poignancy, and some will try to see the film independent of the facts of its creator. They are now, however, intimately bound up with one another. Is this wrong, or right? The reviewer in The Sunday Times today was exceptionally critical towards the film - and I felt he was being heartless, but was he? Perhaps its better than praising a flawed movie just because of the young death of its director.