REVIEW / Bittersweet film served up with heart and soul

Waitress: Comedy-drama. Starring Keri Russell, Adrienne Shelly, Cheryl Hines, Andy Griffith and Jeremy Sisto. Directed by Adrienne Shelly. (PG-13. 104 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.) For complete movie listings and show times, and to buy tickets for select theaters, go to SFGate.com/movies.

As an actress, Shelly became known for starring in the ironic and gently absurd early films of Hal Hartley. "Waitress" maintains a toehold in that tradition, with its air of whimsicality and its emphasis on small-town characters and humble locations. Yet Shelly transcends that tradition, as well, with her eye for the human emotion that informs absurd behavior. In "Waitress," Shelly not only shows the ridiculous; she shows what makes people ridiculous. Her approach is unsentimental, bordering on clinical at times, but there's no mistaking that it's the product of a big heart.

Yet it would be wrong to ascribe the film's success to its warm spirit alone. There are nuts-and-bolts things to talk about -- principally, Shelly's brilliant work with her actors. She guides Keri Russell, in the title role, to one of the best jobs of acting you'll see this year, a performance that's clipped, direct and self-aware -- utterly unromantic and yet full of feeling. Russell plays Jenna, an intelligent, creative woman in a small Southern town who finds herself trapped by circumstance: In the movie's first seconds, she discovers she's pregnant by a husband she loathes and still hopes to leave at the first opportunity.

The husband, Earl (Jeremy Sisto), is not the uncaring brute that you might expect. He's a fascinating monster, a sobbing, emotional tyrant who is obsessed with Jenna. He's overly sensitive and physically threatening and yet easily appeased because all he wants is to be assured at every moment that Jenna won't leave him. This is a dicey character, in that he's clearly mentally ill -- so sick that anything short of a sure directorial hand would make his scenes too jarring for an essentially lighthearted movie. At the same time, Earl must be horrible, because his horribleness is what fuels Jenna's longing to escape -- and the audience's hopes on her behalf. Shelly expertly walks that very delicate directorial line.

Here's one concrete example of how Shelly does it: The husband tells Jenna, "I feed you, I pay for the house. Do what I tell you, and I won't get mad." Another director would have had him yell those lines, or at least say them in a menacing way. Shelly has him say it gently, even innocently, while kissing his wife. It's eerie. It's absurd. It's funny. And it's real. It's somehow all those things, and "Waitress" is full of moments like that.

As the story begins, Jenna, an expert pie maker, has a plan. She wants to sneak out to some upcoming regional bake-off and win the grand prize that will enable her to leave her husband. With a lesser screenwriter that plot strain, once introduced, would form the basis for the entire story. But Shelly doesn't do the expected. Throughout "Waitress," she shifts gears and interrupts expectations, but always in ways that don't feel imposed from outside. Everything is organic and true to the characters.

Shelly plays a mousy waitress, and she's charming. Cheryl Hines is Becky, a wise-cracking middle-aged waitress, and she's fine, too -- except that Shelly shouldn't have forced her to smoke onscreen: Hines looks like she's in pain. Andy Griffith shows up in a pivotal role, as the old crank who owns the diner where the women work, but he's not a typical old crank. His scenes with Russell are shrewdly written and acted.

"Waitress" deserves an essay, not just a review. There are perfect moments that stand out, and the reasons for their perfection are interesting. "Give her to me," Jenna says in the hospital, asking to see her newborn child. It's a blunt demand, and there's a world of meaning and personal history underlying that moment. This is a great American film, and I have no doubt that if Shelly were alive I'd be rhapsodizing now about the emergence of a major talent and looking forward to the films that were sure to follow.

But she was murdered in November, at age 40, by a construction worker, with whom she had argued about noise coming from the apartment underneath her office. After killing her, he tried to make it look like a suicide, but the true story came out within the week. Needless to say, Shelly deserved much, much better -- and we could have used those movies she'll never make. But at least we can content ourselves that Adrienne Shelly managed, with just half a life, to leave behind something lovely and lasting.

-- Advisory: Sexual situations and some coarse language.