Spinster movie review & film summary (2020)

I’ll confess that I’m unfamiliar with Peretti’s stand-up career as well as her recurring role on the acclaimed NBC sitcom, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” but on the basis of her work here, it’s clear that she can anchor a film with her wry detachment, a skill that is quite tricky to pull off well. We first see Gaby suffering through a meet-cute story shared by a potential client of her catering business, and has no qualms with informing the bride-to-be that marriage is “a contract of ownership that evolved into gross consumerism—and then a tax cut.” This leads to a hilarious break-up scene where Gaby’s boyfriend (Eugene Sampang) confesses that he’s been sneaking around her back to play board games with his new flame, an affair that amuses her with its sheer lameness. Gaby’s inability to muster any real tears for this seemingly tragic turn of events accentuates just how little she’s invested in the societal expectations that keep other people her age up at night. 

Jennifer Deyell’s script is divided into chapters that display title cards for each season of Gaby’s 39th year, and nearly all of the film’s funniest moments are contained in its initial section. After her latest relationship falls apart on her birthday, Gaby makes a few disastrous stabs at revitalizing her love life. She flirts with a doctor only to discover that’s he’s married and joins a baseball team where the cute guys take the sport way too seriously. A sequence where she scrolls through various incompatible faces on a dating app culminates with her finding her brother, Alex (David Rossetti), whose own stand-up set is so painfully execrable, it just might be the saddest thing in the movie. Much more charming are the scenes between Gaby and Alex’s 10-year-old daughter, Adele (Nadia Tonen, resembling a pint-sized Frances Conroy), whom she agrees to babysit. Watching this pair stroll through a store, searching for the ideal yarn to knit a hat, one can immediately sense Gaby’s gift for connecting with children, and how it can be utilized in ways that don’t involve motherhood. 

One could easily picture the mopey comedy that “Spinster” could’ve become, with gags dependent on the main character’s obsession over her biological clock ticking toward its expiration. Gaby’s resilience is part of what makes her so refreshing, yet her detachment does begin to feel like a limitation once the film settles for a more generic sweetness, causing its humor to quickly run out of steam. Though the script feeds us fleeting clues about what makes Gaby tick—such as the fact that her father abandoned their family—we never get a vivid sense of her inner life, and when raw emotions are required to rise to the surface, particularly during a scene set at a cemetery, they appear forced. Time and again, the answers to Gaby’s problems materialize all-too-easily, while wise elders—including the woman next door—vocally endorse her choice of lifestyle. The only character who could be deemed a villain is Blair (Kevin Kincaid), an irate partygoer who charges Gaby with being selfish because her desired single status will result in his kids paying her pension. His dialogue maddeningly articulates the misogynistic bile of countless conservative commentators, yet it would’ve been more impactful had Blair not come across as a one-dimensional troll. 

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