Sitting in Bars with Cake review: A bitter-sweet surprise

Are you looking for a pleasant romantic comedy to while away a rainy night in? Be sure to avoid Amazon Prime Video’s new film, Sitting in Bars with Cake. Misleadingly marketed as a ‘romantic comedy’, director Trish Sie’s latest film will break your heart, as much as warm it, in this bittersweet surprise.  

Inspired by true events, Sitting in Bars with Cake is based on Audrey Shulman’s book of the same name. This was the first warning: a typical rom-com is almost never inspired by true events; anyone who’s experienced the real dating world will appreciate why. The second warning sign should have been the intimate photographic style: more depth and shadow than is usually afforded to evanescent love stories. 

Sitting in Bars with Cake follows two childhood best friends who are temporarily living and working together. Charming and shy Jane (Yara Shahidi) is the temporary post-person at the company where Corinne (Odessa A’zion) is a junior music agent.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBzFS40KD0Y

Their jaunty lives (featuring a lovely flatshare, a gorgeous gang of girlfriends and burgeoning career prospects) are further cheered up by Corinne’s proposal that Jane bring a different cake to a sequence of bars. The plan is to use “cake-barring” to help Jane with social anxiety- especially around men. A list is made, a map marked with pins and thread, and our story begins. 

A few cakes in, it was becoming hard to imagine how this storyline was going to sustain two hours of entertainment. Short of being able to try one of these extremely appetising-looking cakes, I could see myself losing interest in the film. Then in came the plot twist: a cancer diagnosis. 

Suddenly, dysfunctional family dynamics come to the fore; the boyfriends fade out, and all that remains constant is Jane’s and Corinne’s friendship. Shahidi’s Jane cares for her friend with the patience and tenderness that will have you sobbing, and A’zion touchingly portrays Corinne’s heart-breaking decline. 

Certain scenes veer into the emotional landscape of the 2014 blockbuster, The Fault in Our Stars. In particular, one scene set on the beach feels inescapably mawkish, but this moment (like the film overall) is saved by a funny moment in the script and heart-warming performances from both stars. 

Eventually, I did not mind having stumbled across a film about heartbreak and possibly not coming-of-age, rather than one about cake and gal-pals, thanks to the film’s poignant reflections on love, life, friendship, and family.

4/5 

Sitting in Bars with Cake is available to watch on Amazon Prime.