★★★★☆
5 June 2017
A movie review of BEATRIZ AT DINNER. |
“All your pleasures are built on other people’s pain,” Beatriz (Salma Hayek)
What a performance from Salma Hayek! An Oscar nomination next year is surely on the cards? Nuanced and well-judged, she conveys as much in gestures and looks as with words. Yes, the film is at times heavy-handed, but the political axes being ground are far from subtle in the modern media arena. The world seems to be rarely presented in shades of grey in the news, perhaps filmmakers are responding with polemics to cut through the noise? As evolved as humankind is, race and class are still hot-button (cinema) topics. BEATRIZ AT DINNER does not shy away from holding up a mirror to hypocrisy and solipsism.
What a performance from Salma Hayek! An Oscar nomination next year is surely on the cards? Nuanced and well-judged, she conveys as much in gestures and looks as with words. Yes, the film is at times heavy-handed, but the political axes being ground are far from subtle in the modern media arena. The world seems to be rarely presented in shades of grey in the news, perhaps filmmakers are responding with polemics to cut through the noise? As evolved as humankind is, race and class are still hot-button (cinema) topics. BEATRIZ AT DINNER does not shy away from holding up a mirror to hypocrisy and solipsism.
“I’m sorry to upset you just before your dinner party. I will burn some sage.” Purposefully portrayed as new age hippy-dippy, so the audience and dinner guests initially do not take her seriously, but what she says makes sense for those attuned to the world. She is spiritual. Her depth of feeling is almost bottomless. The motto of France is “Liberty, equality, fraternity.” One would add the truest form of social cohesion: Empathy, which the lead has in buckets. In Beatriz’s car are an image of the Virgin Mary and a statue of Buddha. Her backyard funeral alter has photos of relatives and her deceased goat. She believes a neighbour killed the latter. Beatriz talks of them as if they are people. She is also a vegetarian. Our protagonist is set-up as almost comically naïve and backward, yet that is just a cover. Unpolished does not mean unintelligent.
Beatriz works as a health therapist at a cancer centre, performing reiki, massage and meditation. She thinks of the world’s interconnectedness. Her values are about to meet head-on the social bubble of a wealthy gated community in Newport Beach. A private client is in keen need of her skills pre-celebratory meal of the title. These secluded believe they are enlightened. It is self-delusion. Beatriz is called a friend of the family, but is far from such. Her car breaks down, and is invited to the soirée.
As guests arrive they are introduced to each other, but not Beatriz. A camera shot behind the lead’s head shows we are going to be looking at proceedings from her point of view. Cathy (Connie Britton) and husband Grant (David Warshofsky) are the hosts. Two couples join them: Alex (Jay Duplass) and spouse Shannon (Chloë Sevigny), the latter works in the oil business, and Doug Strutt (John Lithgow) and third wife Gina (Amy Landecker).
If the narrative contains an antagonist, Doug takes the role. Interestingly, he is not just someone to boo at, Doug is a sh*t of the engrossing variety: A big ego, but knowing himself. Confidence and arrogance engages and repels simultaneously, at first, the latter feeling takes over rapidly. Doug is a property mogul, primarily hotels, and here at a party marking a shopping mall deal. We come to see he just views the Earth as something to used up for pleasure and spat out, with no care for consequences. Any guesses for which current world leader he might be a cypher?
These six are awful people. The wives break off, and relish the schadenfreude of another women, a celebrity, being hacked and intimate images going public. The lack of sisterhood, and the glee of another woman demeaned, objectified and vilified in the public gaze, is conducted without self-analysis.
Doug asks Beatriz to get him a drink, assuming she is help. He quickly represents all that is wrong with the world. Doug questions the legal status of Beatriz, who is Mexican, and that of her family. When she googles him, his nefarious behaviour is unsugar-coated. The dinner party have financially benefitted from Doug. They are all jackals. Doug is the king of the pack.
Tellingly, a waiter, who is white, only talks over guest Beatriz. As Beatriz offers a toast, the audience can feel the social tension. She is there to be silent and tolerated. Hayek has been dowdied [sic] down believably. She is one of the world’s beauties and people give their attention to the beautiful (even if they are just pretending). Here, she has to fight to have her voice heard. Politeness, already in short supply, ebbs away. These people think they are civilised. True manners are not superficial utterances of formalities, but empathy. Beatriz is the conscience of the group/society, brushed aside and buried deep. She observes how you can break something in two seconds, while it can take forever to fix. On meeting Doug and everything he represents, Beatriz states, “All tears flow from the same source.”
One feels the need to quibble the ending, which is unnecessarily melodramatic and overly allegorical. If BEATRIZ AT DINNER had concluded just two minutes earlier, on something more ambiguous, the film would have been superior. Boldly, no obvious solutions are offered. Perhaps, a movie that actually talks about such issues is where some optimism lies?