The Spitfire Grill

The Spitfire Grill (also known as Care of the Spitfire Grill) is a 1996 American drama film written and directed by Lee David Zlotoff, and starring Alison Elliott, Ellen Burstyn, Marcia Gay Harden, Will Patton, Kieran Mulroney and Gailard Sartain. It tells a story of a woman who was just released from prison and goes to work in a small-town café known as The Spitfire Grill. It won the Audience Award at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, prompting several distributors to enter into a bidding war in response to the positive buzz, but when finally released, critics as a whole responded less favorably than they had at Sundance. The film is the basis for the 2001 Off-Broadway musical of the same name by James Valcq and Fred Alley. Plot The story centers on a young woman named Percy Talbott, recently released on parole from the prison at Windham, Ohio who arrives in the small town of Gilead in Maine during the wintertime with hopes of starting a new life. She is given a job as a waitress at the Spitfire Grill, owned by Hannah, whose gruff exterior conceals a kind heart and little tolerance for the Grill's regular customers who are suspicious of and vocal about Percy's mysterious past. None is more suspicious than Nahum, Hannah's nephew, who constantly criticizes Percy and launches his own investigation into her past, although his wife, Shelby, has a kinder curiosity and reaches out to Percy, becoming one of her few friends in town. When Hannah is bedridden after a nasty fall, she places Percy in charge of the Grill despite Percy's relative lack of experience with cooking and kitchen skills. Seeing that Percy is in need of help, Shelby pitches in to work at the Grill and help Percy win the approval of Hannah, who learns she does need friends. Joe, an attractive young man in town, becomes smitten with Percy and spends some time getting to know her, even introducing her to his father, Aaron. Although Joe eventually proposes that he and Percy get married, she refuses because she feels unworthy to be his wife and tells Joe she's unable to bear children. Joe reveals that he has been approached by a scientist who thinks that the town's trees might have medicinal benefits, which might lead to greater economic prospects for Gilead.