Chelsea Peretti

(On Cable TV, November 2019) It takes a while to get used to Spinster’s specific brand of melancholic humour –a romantic comedy that explores the virtues of staying single and aging gracefully despite all the encouragement to the contrary. Chelsea Peretti plays a Halifax-based caterer who, at 39, discovers herself single and unsatisfied with her life, but not necessarily eager to jump back into another relationship. Thanks to a cast of strong supporting characters, Spinster spends a year in her life as she puts it back together, but not necessarily with a significant other. The awkwardness of the comedy means that it’s lighthearted but seldom funny—the down-to-earth cinematography also reinforces the low-stake, low-intensity nature of the script. Peretti does well in the lead role, carrying the film on her shoulders with some aplomb as soon as we get used to the specific rhythm of the film. There isn’t much to the film that screams about it being from the East Coast until the very end—for a while, I thought it was set in Toronto through sheer inertia of believing every English-Canadian film is set in Toronto. Still, it’s an amiable film, more of a journey of self-reconstruction than anything more conventional.