Adri­enne

“Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly mag­i­cal and unfair,” is how Paul Rudd describes the night his friend Adri­enne Shelly’s Wait­ress debuted to acclaim at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val in 2007. Less than three months before this tri­umphant moment, the direc­tor was found dead by her hus­band, Andy Ostroy, in the bath­room of her office. The scene had been staged to look like sui­cide, but when pressed to inves­ti­gate, the police found evi­dence prov­ing homi­cide and appre­hend­ed the culprit.

Now, 15 years lat­er, Ostroy’s grief is still pal­pa­ble and his direc­to­r­i­al debut explores Shelly’s career tra­jec­to­ry from indie ingénue to a name lit up on a Broad­way mar­quee. It is a bit­ter­sweet suc­cess sto­ry run­ning in tan­dem with the tragedy cast­ing a shad­ow over the film­mak­ers’ lega­cy – and the loved ones she left behind.

Can­did con­ver­sa­tions with fam­i­ly (includ­ing Shelly’s now 17-year-old daugh­ter Sophie), friends and col­leagues are entwined with archival footage, home movies, jour­nal entries, and addi­tion­al clips of Shelly’s work that punc­tu­ates this loss with ques­tions of what could have been. It is a deeply per­son­al doc­u­men­tary depict­ing Shelly’s bright life (as well as her career strug­gles) and the raw emo­tions describ­ing this loss will have you reach­ing for the tissues.

There is no space between direc­tor and sub­ject, which is a ben­e­fit when cap­tur­ing the mem­oir-like aspects of major mile­stones. How­ev­er, the close prox­im­i­ty of the direc­tor to the vio­lent crime is occa­sion­al­ly detri­men­tal to the final film. Two dom­i­nant threads take hold ear­ly on and ele­ments lean­ing toward the true crime nar­ra­tive occa­sion­al­ly threat­en to over­whelm the woman at the heart of the sto­ry – a lat­er inter­ac­tion is unflinch­ing and uncomfortable.

Per­haps some of the dis­com­forts felt watch­ing the thornier moments are a reflec­tion of how unfath­omable this tragedy is and the lack of a roadmap for griev­ing a sense­less death. An inti­mate and deeply famil­iar dis­cus­sion of her lega­cy is born out of Shelly’s rela­tion­ship with Ostroy and the warmth ema­nat­ing from the inter­view sub­jects. No doubt, the light he shines on her work will encour­age view­ers to explore Shelly’s back catalogue.

A wealth of options include Hal Hartley’s indie clas­sics The Unbe­liev­able Truth and Trust, as well as the mate­r­i­al Shelly wrote, direct­ed and starred in. Even if you aren’t famil­iar beyond the Keri Rus­sell star­ring Wait­ress, you will come away from Adri­enne with a sense of who the film­mak­er was and could have become.

Humour and sor­row are inex­tri­ca­bly linked in Shelly’s writ­ing, and sim­i­lar­ly, con­tra­dict­ing themes per­sist in this doc­u­men­tary. The joy of Wait­ress becom­ing a Tony-nom­i­nat­ed musi­cal is cou­pled with a pro­found sad­ness that Broad­way audi­ence mem­bers have nev­er even heard of Adri­enne Shelly, or that she strug­gled as a film­mak­er before her biggest hit occurred posthumously.

Out­side of per­son­al rela­tion­ships, the doc­u­men­tary is at its best when it cap­tures how pro­lif­ic Shelly was as she noo­dled with ideas; clips from an aban­doned doc­u­men­tary on the theme of hap­pi­ness are hilar­i­ous and heartbreaking.

Ostroy briefly dis­cuss­es the need to ​“spin some gold” from this ​“hor­ri­fy­ing neg­a­tive” with the cre­ation of the Adri­enne Shelly Foun­da­tion to sup­port women film­mak­ers and more time in the doc­u­men­tary ded­i­cat­ed to this endeav­our would have been ben­e­fi­cial. The num­ber of projects left unfin­ished and unre­alised can­not be mea­sured and this con­tri­bu­tion to the arts is a fit­ting and affect­ing tribute.