While we’re in the midst of movie theaters reopening—with road rage exploitation and gnarly ’90s nostalgia testing the waters for Christopher Nolan’s latest “mind-bending” tent-pole, Tenet—there are still plenty of streaming options for those (most of us, judging by the recent box-office numbers) who aren’t quite ready to eat a bucket of popcorn in a room with a hundred coughing strangers. Bill & Ted Face the Music is currently in a split theatrical/home release, while lesser-known gems like Rogue, in which Megan Fox leads a military outfit against hungry lions (I very nearly chose to review that), or the disastrously titled The Burnt Orange Heresy, in which Mick-effing-Jagger plays a wealthy art dealer instigating a heist, usher us into the new golden age of at-home cinema.
Then there’s Spinster, a down-to-earth, dismantled rom-com without the rom. Starring a subdued Chelsea Peretti, a stand-up comedian probably best known for her scene-owning role as super-diva Gina Linetti in the show Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Spinster explores the life and possibility of the often-taboo topic of singlehood the title suggests. After losing a catering gig due to a difference of opinion with a fairy-tale romance-espousing bride-to-be, Gaby (Peretti) comes home to her boyfriend of three months surreptitiously packing his things, dumping her on her 39th birthday. From there, she’s met with outside pressure from her best friend, her brother and her father, and internal pressure from herself to meet someone and possibly have kids so she doesn’t end up dying alone. It’s a fear so great that we often don’t see how we as a society can be cruel to those who either haven’t found it, or choose to be okay without it.
Though intentionally down-tempo and steadily paced, Spinster never wallows in that fear of ultimate loneliness, but punctuates its naturalistic dialogue with small laughs throughout. While Gaby goes through the rom-com motions in the first act, trying out softball, going on a few Tinder dates, and the like (the montage of her one-line responses to her faceless dates is a hilarious lesson in single-sentence storytelling), it’s not long before she begins to find things that distract from, and ultimately replace, the search for “that special someone,” and though those things are somewhat predictable—she gets a dog, develops a relationship with her niece, makes friends with her spinster neighbor—the film portrays it all with a light-hearted realism, grounded in Peretti’s excellent performance.
Spinster won’t be for everyone. The lighting and cinematography are a little on the Hallmark movie side, and the white upper-middle class Canadian vibe could put some people off, but it’s charming and its characters are so well-developed that I think it could be for everyone, regardless of relationship status. Spinster is worth a rent on Amazon Prime.