Waitress: A

Waitress, a wry fable about pie-making in Dixie, is bursting with flavor. Headlined, in a divine performance, by Keri Russell the film is a cornball comedy layered atop sharp sadness. Written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, an actress-turned-filmmaker, Waitress may require some getting used to - its innocuous sitcom-y rhythms hit you from almost the first frame - but it is such a brazen mixture of laughter, tears, heartache, and triumph that to indulge in it is to indulge in great cinema.

Jenna (Keri Russell) works all day crafting her heart's delight: pies; she also waitresses at the diner where these deserts are served. Her co-workers, Becky (Cheryl Hines) and Dawn (Adrienne Shelly), flutter around her as two deep-fried Southern soul-sisters. Together the three of them put up on a daily basis with old men, cranky cooks, and - in one particularly hilarious scene - passionate stalkers. Their trails and tribulations are funny and charming in a cute confectionary way and the three actresses have strong chemistry but even so, if the laughs had been the whole show the movie would have not been nearly so powerful or radiant.

Luckily for movie-goers Shelly has another trick up her sleeve. It turns out that Jenna has a husband, Earl (Jeremy Sisto in a great shivering piece of sociopathic bullying), who is a psychotic nattering control freak. It also turns out that Jenna is pregnant...with Earl's baby. Seeing as how she was preparing to leave him, this mucks up her plans a bit. Eventually she falls into an affair with her married OB-GYN Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion). Obviously some drama ensues. Still the picture would have been incomplete, good but not great, had it not been for the sharp skill with which this delightful "pie" of a film was assembled.

As described by Old Joe (Andy Griffith, still a man with killer comedic timing), Jenna's pies are great things because of the way they reveal themselves: letting each flavor be exposed, flower, and then introduce the next. The same can be said for Waitress as well. As the first scenes' comedy give way to a depper longing the two "flavors" - wit and gloom - mix to near perfect effect. Then come along a couple of wily visual tricks (the pie-creation sequences, the "Dear Baby" letters) that work with uncanny perceptiveness to show the audience, layer-by-layer, Jenna's starved and smothered soul. Soon even the gloom gives way, this time to discovery and rebirth, and to watch Keri Russell's face slowly awaken to the possibility of life is to witness one of the true movie experiences of the year.

Laughter is the buoyant common denominator in each act's plot thrust (her pregnancy, her affair, her friendship with Old Joe) and it is a rare thing that such an element is maintained throughout. But it is even more rare to me that Adrienne Shelly could mix her strong ingredients into a creation of such memorable taste and art. As Waitress reaches its Day-Glo fantasia epilogue - still with heart, soul, and smile intact - it has attained something suprassing even grace: it has reached bliss.