Reviewed by © Jane Freebury
Think
‘when worlds collide’ with this one.
Unexpected
dinner guests can create quite a stir. There is something of a cinema sub-genre
out there that shows how they can seriously upset the status quo. From Wetherby,
to Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? to last year’s Get Out.
In Beatriz
at Dinner, Salma Hayek is in the lead role as a Mexican immigrant who winds
up as an unexpected guest at an elegant, intimate dinner party at a mansion in
Southern California. She’s not
exactly uninvited. Her well-meaning host, Kathy (Connie Britton in a
sympathetic role), invites her to stay for the dinner her husband has organised
for business colleagues. This happens when Beatriz finds herself stranded at
their home with a car that won’t start.
As the
other couples arrive, Beatriz looks predictably out of place in her jeans and
shirt—it was her choice to remain dressed in her own clothes. She’s even at one
point predictably mistaken for the help.
Earlier
in the day, she was at the cancer treatment centre where she works as a
holistic health therapist. Beatriz and Kathy had become and remained friends
when Kathy’s teenage daughter needed cancer treatment.
This
particular evening, it’s Doug Strutt (John Lithgow), who is guest of honour.
He's the man. A real estate development mogul, he is an obnoxious, odious
loud-mouth, but everyone defers to him because he holds the purse strings for
the deal that’s on the verge of being done.
Beatriz
keeps asking if she knows him from somewhere, and there is a strong hint that
some of Doug’s business activities, in Mexico at least, have been outside the
law and morally reprehensible.
Jeana
(Amy Landecker), who is wife number three, does her best to smooth over the
dozens of offences—large and small— that Doug causes in conversation.
I was
expecting Chloe Sevigny to have more impact in her role as one of the wives,
but not on this occasion. Instead, the floor belongs to Beatriz who loses her
cool when Doug boasts about a forthcoming holiday in South Africa, where he
will go big game hunting again. He passes an image around on his mobile of the
magnificent creature he shot on the last occasion. ‘Disgusting’, Beatriz shouts
and throws the phone back at him.
In an
instant, Doug is not just a clone of Trump, but a reminder of that millionaire
dentist from Minnesota who paid big money last year to shoot an African lion,
to universal dismay.
The role
of a woman of principle who confronts attitudes she finds disreputable and
appalling, was created with Hayek in mind by writer Mike White, who has written
a few comedies, including School of Rock. There is some incisive writing
here from White, especially for the characters of Doug, Beatriz, Kathy and
Jeana.
Beatriz
at Dinner is described by some as a comedy-drama. I didn’t see much comedy,
except the rueful, sardonic kind in this modest, earnest and disturbing film,
directed by Puerto-Rican born American Miguel Arteta.
It’s well
known in film and in life, that the pleasant, planned dinner party, can bring
heads together in a monumental clash of minds. At loggerheads, anticipated and
unanticipated.
The
conversation at this dinner is urgently worth having, but the schism between
characters only deepens. The declarations of views lead nowhere, except into a
wider divide, leaving worlds as far apart as ever.
Beatriz
at Dinner had the potential to extend and expand the important debate on our
responsibilities to others and the world we share, but it winds up a missed
opportunity.
3 Stars
Also published on Jane's blog and broadcast on
ArtSound FM