Happily Ever After Without All the Fairy Tale Crap: Spinster Starring Chelsea Peretti

One of the best parts of the current day movie scene is how many different stories and perspectives we get to see. Often, people think of dramatic films as being the best vehicle for these lesser known stories, yet more and more we’re seeing comedies carry this banner. This summer’s quiet indie comedy Spinster (2020), starring Chelsea Peretti as the eponymous spinster, is the latest highlight on a unique character perspective.

Spinster starts with a young woman gushingly telling Gaby (Chelsea Peretti), who owns a catering business, about the dream wedding she’s planning. She rattles on about how her entire whirlwind romance is like a real-life fairy tale while the camera stays fixed on Peretti’s signature incredulous, bored expression. When she finally does speak, Gaby deadpans her response, letting this excited bride-to-be know exactly how little she thinks of full grown women referring to anything as a real life fairy tale. Naturally, the woman questions her decision to pick this caterer, then tells Gaby that she’s going to be alone forever–even though Gaby has a live-in boyfriend.

Since this is a comedy, the very next scene is said boyfriend not only leaving Gaby, but leaving his entire apartment to move back in with an ex. Thus, Spinster truly begins. 

Gaby runs into all the usual chicanery a single woman pushing 40 can expect to experience in a society that still doesn’t really know what to do with women over 30 in general. She has to navigate snot-fingered children at parties and people babbling on about how sad it must be to live alone. She goes on a date with a guy that she seems to click with well enough, but post-sex he makes it clear that he’s not interested in anything else with her specifically. When her next door neighbor invites her over for a small gathering, Gaby finally gets a breath away from the norm and can see, via an older woman who’s had an exceptional life and career, that there are options available to her. The problem for Gaby now becomes not knowing how to choose a direction and harness her own ambition.

What elevates Spinster is Peretti’s performance and the nearly real dynamics between the characters. Peretti carries the humor through to a new level where we, the audience, find ourselves laughing at something as small as a facial tick or as obvious as an uncomfortable open mic night at a comedy club. She also sells Gaby as an actually a competent person who runs a successful business and has a lovely home–even if she did get it by driving someone else out of it. Her friend Amanda (played by Lorraine Newman doppleganger Susan Kent), a stay at home mom that does photography as a side hustle, is a source of support. While she sometimes has tunnel vision in regards to her kids, she also encourages and defends Gaby. In one of the best scenes in the movie, Amanda is quick to shut up a male guest that starts lecturing Gaby about what it means to be childless and doubts the existence of the patriarchy. When Gaby laments that they don’t spend time together as people anymore, Amanda tells her that she was similarly hurt when Gaby couldn’t make time for her during the isolating experience of early motherhood. It’s a true to life scene that adds an extra layer of nuance to both the characters and their interactions.

Gaby’s relationship to her divorced brother’s pubescent daughter Willow (Charlie Boyle) is similarly illuminating. It’s through Willow that Gaby sees firsthand the awkward and uncertain existence that so many women and girls go through. She makes a point to teach her niece to say what she wants, to not let other people’s feelings rule her decisions. Gaby, for all her faults, is an assertive and fairly bold person so when she sees an almost teen girl shirk at the idea of declaring her own needs, she knows that cannot stand. It’s an interesting parallel, considering how Gaby still seems to struggle with the peer pressure of her own decisions.

Peretti’s strength as an actor is the ability to seem genuine without changing her tone of voice or the expression on her face. When Amanda opens up about feeling abandoned, Peretti delivers a line of apology in the same flatly sarcastic way she says almost everything else yet it doesn’t come across as dismissive or mocking. It’s in these moments that Spinster shines. Peretti’s comedic timing and low-key acting truly makes the movie, without it Spinster wouldn’t be nearly as laugh-out-loud funny. It’s hard to see anyone else playing the role and making the character as likable as she becomes.

The movement of time, done cleverly with the seasons, is especially important in a movie about a single woman. Women are constantly told that time is running out for them; that they only have so many years where they are a viable option for anyone. Herein lies the heart of Spinster: that women often perceive themselves as “options” rather than being offered options. They don’t get shown what they can do outside of a very narrow array of paths, and when they stray too far from these, they’re constantly questioned and have their choices second guessed.

In one of the penultimate scenes, Gaby meets a potential beaux Nicolas (Josh MacDonald) during a walk through a nature preserve. They click immediately and share a kiss, but her brief foray into fantasy is quickly dashed by some bland practicality. Spinster ends on a note of personal and business success with absolutely no tidy wrap-up for Gaby’s love life. In that way it’s quietly subversive, especially for a comedy. It actively moves away from the cliche that even the most independent women are just looking for a relationship–giving its characters a satisfying resolution, albeit in a different shape than most.

Without Peretti, Spinster would have been fine but unremarkable, perhaps aside from its unusual ending. She plays Gaby realistically without shrinking away from the comedic timing the film needs or allowing Gaby to lapse into clownish caricature. Between the oh-so-current dilemma of women still being inundated with toxic ideals and Peretti’s trademark style of acting, Spinster becomes a lovely and funny movie about how much better we can be as people when we stop trying to be better for others.

Spinster is available now on VOD