Alongside lobster thermidor, understated drama and excellent performances are delivered up in Tony, the story of how 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain found his path toward food.
In 1975, the world doesn’t know who Anthony Bourdain is, nor, really, does Bourdain. He knows he wants people to call him Tony, and that he’s willing to lie his way into any role that might momentarily suite him. At the start of the film Tony, it’s writing.
When he’s not awarded the writing fellowship he’s already told his family and crush he won, 19-year-old Bourdain follows Nancy – the crush – to Cape Cod’s seaside town, Provincetown. He tells Nancy he’s writing a book for the fake fellowship about a chef, so he’s working at the seafood joint Flagship as research. Really he was kicked to the curb of the restaurant for being drunk and crude, then started working there immediately, thanks to the good-hearted chef, who also gave young Tony the hammock on his back porch, which would make do as a bed. What Tony is – besides a seemingly lost and hopeless wanderer with romantic, however sketchy, ambitions – is a creative thinker and full of ego, and what becomes clear from the start of Tony is that, had he not become a celebrity chef and top-rated food travel guide, he would have been a success at whatever else he set his mind to.
Like most biopics, Tony is a story centred around that pivotal moment in a young person’s life that turns everything around. This moment, in the film, is delivered by the chef of Flagship, played by veteran actor Antonio Banderas (The Mask of Zorro, Spy Kids). It’s not difficult to predict the film’s ending, not only because of the massive media exposure Bourdain received in the decade before his suicide, but because these type of films follow a formula and tend to be commercial successes because of it. But this biopic, at least, doesn’t pander to the pop songs of the time that would’ve filed it firmly into a feel-good flick; instead the soundtrack sports the likes of Television, The Stooges, Faces and Brian Eno. The setting feels nostalgic without the nostalgia, meaning there’s a fantastic wardrobe of tight t-shirts and not a whole lot of cliché. Unless you count the impropriety of the kitchen staff, but the film was adapted from Bourdain’s 2000 New York Times bestselling memoir Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, so it is, in essence, nonfiction. In fact the first two chapters of the book make up the bulk of what you’ll find on screen, and you know what that means? Bourdain did become a writer after all.
Staring in the lead, Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers) is young Bourdain, not yet full of the unpolished charm and everyday arrogance viewers of the culinary and cultural travel shows Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown tuned in to see, but getting there. He’s a wonderful choice for the role: immediately intriguing and strangely charming with a dull kind of veneer. Banderas, too, is a magnificent fit for the
unpretentious mentor Chef, and Emilia Jones (CODA) as Nancy is naturally cool, cast as a regular girl with a fresh hint of sass. Directed by Matt Johnson (Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie, Blackberry), the drama slides into comedy stealthily.
Opening night saw the Palace Nova at Prospect laying on pre-film bubbles from Handorf’s Sidewood Estate and trays of oysters (Bourdain’s favourite food), thanks to Pantry on Prospect, affectionally known as POP. The restaurant sent the audience to their seats with a specially curated charcuterie box, and once settled in, Callum Hann of MasterChef fame – and co-owner of Pop, alongside Themis Chryssidis – introduced the film, as well as the almonds, which were only two days earlier still on the tree. Yes, the almonds were outstanding, and yes, the film left us hankering for good food. But not because we were still hungry; because we felt that passion in our bellies Tony aimed to deliver.
Reviewed by Heather Taylor-Johnson
Rating 3.5 out of 5
Distributor: A24
