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film fatales #217: waitress (adrienne shelly, 2007)

This is the thirteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2024-25", a "33-week-long community challenge" where "you must watch one previously unseen film that fits the criteria of the theme for the week." This is the 10th annual challenge, and my sixth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", "2022-23", and 2023-24). Week 13 is called "Movie Nom-noms Week":

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.

- Aphorism IV, Physiologie du goût, by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Even though film cannot convey two of food's most fundamental properties, taste and smell, there's still something powerfully appetizing about food in the movies. Food is the great unifier, one of the few things our biology requires, tying us together, no matter our language, gender, nationality, ancestry, or beliefs. And yet, food is a significant differentiator, highly specific to the culture from which we spring and further distilled by our distinctive, personal tastes. That contrast makes cuisine in cinema extra special: it's not just about vital sustenance but also about exploring community, identity, heritage, and artistry, subjects ideally suited to film and made even more memorable when viewed through the unique lens of food.

This week's challenge is to tuck into a title from Ian Casocot's Films in Celebration of Food [and Where to Watch Them]. Whether you pair it with good old popcorn or something more epicurean, you can't go wrong munching along to films with fare as enticing as this. C'est trop bon!

I admit I found the food angle in Waitress a bit unbelievable. It takes place in Joe's Pie Diner, and pie and coffee seems to be just about all they serve. The title character, Jenna (Keri Russell) is the primary pie maker, and by "primary" I mean she appears to be the only pie maker. And she waits tables. And they have lots of varieties of pies, including one she invents every day. I'm not a pie maker, but that seems like too much work for one person to do in a day.

It doesn't matter, of course, because Waitress is a delight. It will forever be known as the last film of Adrienne Shelly, an actress who moved into writing and directing (she does all of those things in Waitress, writing, directing, and co-starring). Shelly was murdered before the film's release. Since Waitress was a true blossoming of a fine multi-skilled talent, it is now remembered for the "What If?" angle.

This is unfair, because the film stands on its own ... it doesn't need our sympathy. Jenna finds herself pregnant at the beginning of the film. She is unhappy in her marriage, and she develops a serious crush on her married doctor (Nathan Fillion), which he returns. The events that follow could be standard, but Shelly, in her writing and in her directing of actors, makes each character believable without forcing them to act in the usual rom-com ways. It's not that there are plot twists, exactly, but the characters do act in unexpected (but realistic) ways.

Waitress snuck up on me. I expected something mildly pleasant, and was glad to find it surpassed my low expectations. And it lingers in the mind, so that I like it more now than I did when I watched it yesterday. Besides Russell, Fillion, and Shelly, the cast includes Cheryl Hines, Jeremy Sisto, and a delightful turn from Andy Griffith as the cranky owner of the pie diner.

geezer cinema/film fatales #216: my old ass (megan park, 2024)

Megan Park's feature debut as a writer-director was 2021's The Fallout, a very good film about which I wrote:

Park's directing debut is confident ... there are no signs of first-timers disease. She tells the story as she wants, gets the performances she wants, creates a believable world of high-schoolers, and even makes the adults seem true-to-life, neither ogres nor saints.... Park doesn't reach too far, which just adds to the powerful nature of what we see.

I could say the same about My Old Ass, which features actors portraying believable teenagers and reasonable adults. But the tone of My Old Ass is different from its predecessor. The Fallout was about trauma, and while that topic sneaks in the backdoor at the end, My Old Ass is a more standard coming-of-age story. And where The Fallout was realistic enough to require a trigger warning at the beginning, My Old Ass drops a fantasy element into what is otherwise a straightforward account of the blossoming of a young woman. In My Old Ass, Elliott (a delightful Maisy Stella) does mushrooms and encounters her own self from 20 years into the future. That the older Elliott is played by Aubrey Plaza only adds to the enjoyment, although Plaza fans should note she is only a supporting actor here.

The time-travel angle doesn't always make sense, but Park explains it in such a way that we go along with it anyway. The obvious questions arise, as the previews make clear: if you could talk to yourself from a different age, what would you want to know, and what if you could change everything? What's nice is that, once again, Park doesn't reach too far ... the questions arise, but in the middle of a feel-good movie about youth. It's not too smarmy and it's not too serious until the end.

Park's background is interesting ... she's been a musician and an actor, and now she has two solid feature films to her credit. She is definitely someone to keep an eye on.

film fatales #215: the breaker upperers (madeleine sami and jackie van beek, 2018)

This is the fourth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2024-25", a "33-week-long community challenge" where "you must watch one previously unseen film that fits the criteria of the theme for the week." This is the 10th annual challenge, and my sixth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", "2022-23", and 2023-24). Week 4 is called "Her Dark Material Week":

Are you familiar with Letterboxd user's hyper-specific lists? You know, the ones with weirdly-similar, surprisingly common details shared by two or three otherwise unrelated films? It's too bad there aren't enough options for an LSC weekly challenge. They're inspiring, though, so, in that vein, we'll cast our attention toward a list that goes a bit broader but still feels sufficiently focused. The first shared element for this week's challenge is that the movie be female-led (or the storyline at least female-driven.) Tipping the scales more equitably is something we're interested in here at LSC, and setting our sights on stories about women is a small but conscious step in that direction. Second, there's a twist! Forget light and frothy. Instead, we need something with an undercurrent of darkness, as there's nothing like a streak of controversy to keep things interesting. And, third, let there be LOLs! Laughing has myriad health benefits (it can increase your immune response, for one), and who couldn't be in better health?

Voila! Your challenge this week is to watch a title from Kevin MJ's The Best Female-Led Dark Comedy Films list. It might not carve out as meticulous a nano genre as some others, but it'll give us a wealth of options and hopefully prove as much fun!

Well, I was warned. The Breaker Upperers is a dark comedy, and I'm not a fan of modern comedies. Using the Letterboxd definition of comedies, I have given my highest rating to only two comedies in the 21st century. At some point (and I reached this point a long time ago) it is pointless for me to comment on modern comedies. Good ones, bad ones, they connect with me so rarely that I have nothing to say, and my evaluation is so biased that no one can learn anything from my opinion. So I'll say that The Breaker Upperers is refreshing in that it's a buddy movie about women, and Madeleine Sami and Jackie van Beek, who directed, wrote, and starred, are talented. And Lucy Lawless has a blink-and-you'll-miss it cameo.

african-american directors series/film fatales #214: alma's rainbow (ayoka chenzira, 1994)

Alma's Rainbow has an interesting history. It was the first feature for writer/director Ayoka Chenzira, who had made several shorts. It was self-funded by Chenzira, and featured a cast of unknowns ... heck, 30 years later, and I still didn't recognize anyone but Isaiah Washington, who had a small role. The talent behind the camera was impressive, including editor Lillian Benson, cinematographer Ronald K. Gray, and costume designer Sidney Kai Innis, all of them new to me. The film looks great, helped by a fairly recent 4k restoration.

It's a coming-of-age movie, and I love the title: Rainbow is the daughter of Alma. It's a slice of life, and it offers a lot of insight into the culture of African-American women. There is a confidence in the film making that makes the movie feel "real". The acting is solid ... there's pretty much nothing bad I can say about the movie. It doesn't jump out at you, nor is that Chenzira's intention. It's never boring, and something is always catching your eye. It's an indie film that succeeds. It was ignored at the time, and was barely distributed, but the restoration resulted in the film finally getting the attention it has always deserved. It is one of 75 films selected for Slate's New Black Film Canon.

film fatales #213: happening (audrey diwan, 2021)

Abortion is serious business, and a movie that features abortion better be good or it will outrage ... what a woman goes through deserves a powerful film. Of course, abortion is a crucial topic in the U.S. right now, and some movies, which occur in a time and/or place where abortions are hard to come by, really hit home. In Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), the central character is only 17, and can't get an abortion in her state without parental consent, so she goes to New York. And the brilliant 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) takes place in Romania during the Ceaușescu era, where everyday life is oppressive.

Happening takes place in France in 1963, and the illegal status of abortion and the accompanying repression reflects our own times. The decision of the young student to have an abortion is honest and considered ... she isn't thoughtless, she is realistic. But the trauma is twofold, because abortion is a difficult decision and the procedures are risky (especially when you must go underground to get it done), and because of the social pressures on women to acquiesce to their situation as they are told to. Happening doesn't hold back ... the various attempts at abortion are grisly and extremely upsetting, and it's a bit hard to recommend the film to anyone sensitive to these things. But it's also honest and necessary, and it's a surprise that it wasn't submitted to the Oscars as the French submission. They sent Titane, another unsettling film that isn't as good as Happening. Titane was explicitly in the body horror genre ... in Happening, writer/directorAudrey Diwan manages to show how an unwanted pregnancy fits into that genre as well, almost accidentally.

This was the first time I saw Anamaria Vartolomei, and she is excellent. The legendary Sandrine Bonnaire turns up late in the film as an abortionist. It's always good to encounter new-to-me talents like Diwan and Vartolmei, even when the film is as disturbing as Happening.

 

film fatales #212: bodies bodies bodies (halina reijn, 2022)

Pauline Kael once told of an intelligent young man who proclaimed that The Beast with Five Fingers was the greatest horror film he had ever seen, because "it's completely irrational. It doesn't make any sense, and that's the true terror."

I felt a bit like Kael in that anecdote as I watched Bodies Bodies Bodies. It's a pretty stupid movie, but I sensed that the problem was I was too old to appreciate it. The film combines the locked-room feel of a classic Agatha Christie with the moronic behavior of the kinds of young people who always make dumb decisions in slasher films. None of it makes much sense, but maybe I'm missing the true terror amidst the very knowing depiction of Gen Z characters. Perhaps if you were Gen Z, you would enjoy the familiar satirical depiction of your cohorts.

Me, I found it tiresome. I'm always glad to see Rachel Sennott, and Lee Pace is always welcome. At least you only have to wait 94 minutes to get to the trick/ironic/explanatory ending.

film fatales #211: ed and pauline (christian bruno and natalija vekic, 2014)

Brief (18 minutes) look at the story of the Cinema Guild in Berkeley in the 1950s. Fun for fans of Pauline Kael. Doesn't include anything new, but us Kael fans don't care.

film fatales #210: wicked little letters (thea sharrock, 2023)

Wicked Little Letters offers a fun, fact-based movie that gives co-stars Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley an excuse to show why they are popular. That it doesn't do more than that isn't a crime, but the result isn't quite as funny as you might hope. The premise is that someone in a small English town is writing vile poison-pen letters filled with dirty words. Colman is the recipient of them, while Buckley is the neighbor accused of being the author.

It's initially entertaining to hear the letters read aloud, as one after another stereotypical English person spouts obscenities. Buckley is delightful as usual as an Irish woman who swears up a storm, and she isn't the most logical suspect ... as she points out, why would she write the letters when she is perfectly happy to bark bad words to people's faces.

There's a subtext about women in the 1920s trying to emerge from the strictures of society, but it doesn't get in the way of the farce, which is perhaps a missed opportunity. Fans of the stars will be happy.

film fatales #209: bernice bobs her hair (joan micklin silver, 1976)

Seemed like a good idea to watch something with Shelley Duvall, and I chose this, based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald that was made for American television in the mid 70s. Duvall's quirkiness was always difficult for directors; only Robert Altman seemed to know what to do with her. But Joan Micklin Silver (Hester Street) connects well with her star, who is as perfectly cast as she was playing Olive Oyl. The result is a minor gem.

film fatales #208: the souvenir (joanna hogg, 2019)

I feel like I need a spoiler warning before writing about The Souvenir. I'm usually pretty good at avoiding crucial spoilers, but much of what works and doesn't work in The Souvenir comes out of a specific plot point. So, you've been warned.

Joanna Hogg directed Exhibition, which I liked, in part because of the fine job from former Slits member Viv Albertine. The Souvenir has an intriguing cast ... Tilda Swinton in a supporting role (and what actor in our time is more intriguing than Tilda Swinton?); Tom Burke, who recently appeared as Praetorian Jack in Furiosa and who played Orson Welles in Mank; and Swinton's daughter Honor Swinton Byrne in what is effectively her film debut. This is only my second Joanna Hogg movie, but I already feel like she has a recognizable visual style ... she's not afraid of mirrors, for one thing.

The Souvenir is a semi-autobiographical remembrance of Hogg's time in film school. The Hogg stand-in, Julie, begins a relationship with an older man, Anthony, and at first that relationship feels fairly straightforward, although from the start I wanted more time spent on Julie than on Anthony (in fairness, Anthony in the film only exists as part of Julie's world ... there is no question which character is at the center of the movie). The scenes of Julie and her film-school friends are fun, the scenes with her with Anthony less so, and we eventually learn a reason for this: Anthony isn't always a lot of fun because he's a heroin addict.

It's tough, albeit not impossible, to represent addicts in a movie. A greedy, flamboyant portrait risks romanticizing, but a down-in-the-dregs picture can become too dreary to watch. Hogg is closer to the latter approach ... Anthony is not the most interesting character in the movie, and his addiction doesn't really make him more interesting. But The Souvenir never falls too far into dreariness, because the center of the movie lies not in Anthony but in Julie, who is full of youthful life. I suspect I am asking too much of Hogg, for the character of Julie is believable and interesting and she is, after all, the focus of the picture. A movie like Sid and Nancy, where both people in the relationship are junkies, eventually pulls away from romanticizing because both characters falls into the dregs, but the vibrancy of Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb still jumps off of the screen. In The Souvenir, Anthony is a much quieter junkie than Sid or Nancy, and while Byrne gives a strong performance, it doesn't often call for "vibrancy". So The Souvenir is a more low-key film than something like Sid and Nancy, and I'm not sure it makes sense for me to even compare the two.

There is much to respect about The Souvenir, and it's easy to recommend it. I preferred Exhibition, but both of the Hogg films I have seen are encouraging. #148 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century.