That line from Clueless popped into my head repeatedly as I watched Liz Manashil’s filmmaking debut. Brittany Murphy delivers the “way harsh” insult to Alicia Silverstone as a means for discrediting her. If you’re a virgin who can’t drive, who are you to give someone life advice? Of course, those characters are teenagers, so they aren’t exactly brimming with wisdom. Amelia (Christine Weatherup), the protagonist of Bread and Butter, is thirty years old.
Early on, Manashil cleverly establishes Amelia’s desire to “live in a French movie”. This sets the audience up to expect a certain quality of whimsy (that her name is so close to Amelie can’t be a coincidence). When she finds an annotated novel in a used bookshop, and vows to meet the man behind the notes, you think you know what’s coming. But Amelia is no Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She’s more like a Manic Normal Human Woman. And Bread and Butter, is a romantic comedy about what dating is really like for socially inept oddballs…
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Effed by the Wind 