civex Blog

Under discussion:

Film Name  Production Year

Waitress  (2007)

"Waitress" has brilliant casting and direction. Whoever did the casting nailed every role no matter how small with the perfect actor. This movie was directed by Adrienne Shelly, who also wrote the screenplay. (She was murdered just before the film's release when she walked in on a burglar in her home office.)

The movie is about Jenna (Keri Russell), who is married to a terrible man. Jenna finds out she's pregnant just when she's saved up enough money from waitressing to leave her husband. Russell has a hard, angry face throughout much of the movie, exactly as we'd expect from someone in her position. Her husband, Earl, is played by Jeremy Sisto with totally convincing creepiness as a controlling, needy narcissist. (I don't know where Shelly dredged up his character, but she nailed it in the screen play, and Sisto nailed it in his performance). Jenna falls in love with her doctor (Dr. Pomatter), played superbly by Nathan Fillion. Jenna and Pomatter's scenes range from riotously funny to affectingly poignant. The problem is, he's married, too, and his wife (played by Darby Stanchfield) loves him. I was watching the movie, wondering how Shelly was going to get Jenna and Pomatter out of what clearly is an untenable relationship.

Aside from the conflict of their adulterous relationship, we have a potentially even more momentous conflict: Jenna doesn't want to be pregnant. It means she can't just run off and leave Earl. Jenna begins a letter to her baby, explaining why she can't love it.

Meanwhile, her fellow waitresses, her manager, the restaurant owner, and a wealth of others have their fifteen minutes on the screen, adding a richness to the world of Jenna that we're peeking in on. Shelly does get all the conflicts resolved, but the ending is a little too "deus ex machina" for me. Just a little, not enough to spoil it. It's a great, grand film, and Shelly's murderer robbed us all of a wonderful talent. 

Under discussion:

Lantana  (2001)

This is an excellent film, with great characters and surprising twists. The movie opens with Valerie dead, lying in the thorny brush known locally as lantana - a metaphor, of course, for what life is like for the characters in the tangled plot. Valerie Somers is played by Barbara Hershey, and her husband John Knox by Geoffrey Rush. Anthony LaPaglia plays the police detective Leon Zat investigating her death. We see Valerie and John in flashbacks, showing a deteriorating relationship, and we see Leon in the present, cheating on his wife. Although none of the characters knows each other, their lives are intertwined nonetheless. It's a thicket of relationships that scratches and draws blood.

LaPaglia and Rush are outstanding. John is a major suspect, as all husbands are in the deaths of their wives, and John and Leon spar as the investigation shows the bad blood between John and Valerie. We learn, finally, that John is factually innocent, but he is morally guilty of her death all the same. Leon at first sneers at John and his naked emotion, but events turn on Leon, wrenching from him his manly self esteem.

This is an adult film, dealing with adult themes. No action, no gunfights, no superheroes. Just us humans muddling through. Director Ray Lawrence and writer Andrew Bovell give us much to chew over, moments of understanding, and finally acceptance of our condition.