The Dish & the Spoon

The Dish & the Spoon is a 2011 American film directed by Alison Bagnall, starring Greta Gerwig, Olly Alexander, Eleonore Hendricks and Amy Seimetz.[1]

The Dish & The Spoon
Theatrical Poster
Directed byAlison Bagnall
Screenplay by
  • Alison Bagnall
  • Andrew Lewis
Story byAlison Bagnall
Starring
CinematographyMark Schwartzbard
Edited byDarrin Navarro
Release date
  • 2011 (2011)
Running time
93 minutes
LanguageEnglish

Plot

Rose (Greta Gerwig) leaves her cheating husband (Adam Rottenberg) and runs into an comatose boy (Olly Alexander), at a desolate beachside lighthouse in a boarded-up beach town in Delaware on a cloudy fall day. Rose first tries to get him to a hospital, but he awakes and refuses, so they go to a cafe, where he reveals has been dumped by a girl he had traveled from England to be with.

Rose drags him along as she looks to confront her former friend Emma (Eleonore Hendricks), for betraying her with her husband. They first go to a beer bottling plant where Emma used to work, where they get drunk on pilfered beer. Then they go to Rose's parents' summer house, where Rose leaves him for a day while she awaits Emma at her home, presumably without success.

They generally display different responses to their experience of being jilted, Rose often shouting fiercely at or about her husband and his lover, while the boy is more lost and subdued. But one phone call to her husband begins with Rose screaming insults at him, but then listening attentively to something to which she responds only with an occasional and solemn "yes." Later she calls him again, leaving an apparently friendlier message, but continues to stay with the boy at the beach house. The boy puts up with odd role play scenarios, allowing her to dress him up as a woman so she can play the part of the macho male.

They spend the following morning on a fishing boat, catching a large fish. That night they kiss, and the boy says he would like to marry her and have children; Rose suggests they have ten who look like him, so she has "ten of you" but none who look like her. The next day they have a vintage photo taken of them in wedding clothes, then finishing their dream relationship by showing him her future burial plot. He gets them costumes to participate in a country dance held that Sunday, where she is able to physically confront Emma; whom she first chases into a kitchen and angrily restrains, then lets her go when she catches the boy's eye, and breaks down in tears. Later she returns to her house and embraces him silently; the boy finally releases some rage by briefly pushing him to the ground, after which the husband and Rose go inside and make up while the boy walks off alone.

Together they learn what everyone in a seasonal town already knows: seasons always change; this too shall pass.[2]

Cast

References

  1. ^ "The Dish & the Spoon: Movie Review". The Hollywood Reporter. 2011-03-18. Retrieved 2016-10-16.
  2. ^ Holden, Stephen (9 February 2012). "The Dish & The Spoon From Alison Bagnall". The New York Times. Retrieved 2016-10-16.