Film: The Cake Eaters

Cast includes: Kristen Stuart (Twilight), Aaron Stanford (X-Men), Bruce Dern (Big Love), Elizabeth Ashley (Shoot the Moon)
Director: Mary Stuart Masterson
Genre: Offbeat drama/romance

In brief: Under the opening credits we see a home movie showing Mom and Beagle. Back in the present, Dad and Beagle are sitting at the breakfast table in silence, until Dad says, “I’ll go with Shredded Wheat from now on.” Mom has recently died and it’s not easy getting back to a “normal” life. Across town, Georgia’s aspiring photographer mom is taking artsy photos of Georgia to “document her disease.” We don’t have to wait long to find out what Georgia’s suffering from. Georgia and her grandmother meet Beagle and his dad at a local flea market. Dad volunteers Beagle to help take Georgia to the restroom, and Beagle asks, “What’s wrong with you, anyway?” We learn that Georgia is suffering from a skeletal muscular disease, and her condition is “about as good as it’s going to get… until my heart stops beating and I die.”

Georgia is beautiful but damaged. Beagle is the awkward guy who works in the lunchroom of Georgia’s high school. One strand of the story starts when Georgia invites Beagle over to her house to help her with her homework. In the meantime the older son, Guy, finally returns, having missed the last three years, including Mom’s funeral. As we’ll learn there are several connections between the two families, but we have to wait until the story unfolds.

This is a gentle film, set in rural upstate New York. While it may sound like a potential tearjerker, it isn’t. The filmmakers gently avoided the temptation to goose up the story with emotional highs and lows. Everything about the story feels real and down-to-earth. Without emotional manipulation, the film shows us that “life can be as sweet as you make it.”

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