JUNE 19, 2017
Movie-wise, it’s been a tough summer not only at the blockbuster box-office, but also in art houses across the country. Well-reviewed specialized films can sometimes be effective counter-programming against the by-the-numbers blockbuster sequels, as been proven in summers past. But this year, art-house movies have also been struggling, both commercially and critically.
One exception to the rule is Miguel Arteta’s “Beatriz at Dinner,” written by his long-time collaborator Mike White. The film has garnered mostly favorable reviews and is off to a promising start at the box-office.
Here’s the set-up: Beatriz (Salma Hayek) is a physical therapist at an alternative cancer-treatment center, who also takes on a number of private clients, a clientele that includes Cathy (Connie Britton), a wealthy woman from a gated community in Orange County, CA. In Cathy’s mind, Beatriz was the key figure in nursing her sick daughter back to health, and Cathy has been forever grateful.
After a therapy session with Cathy, Beatriz finds that her car battery has died, so Cathy invites her to a dinner party that she’s throwing that night. Beatriz, dressed down in work clothes, gratefully declines, but Cathy insists. Cathy’s image-conscious husband Grant (David Warshofsky) thinks it’s not a very good idea. Turns out, Grant is right.
The guest list includes lawyer Alex (Jay Duplass) and his wife Shannon (Chloë Sevigny), as well as socialite Jeana (Amy Landecker), who is the third wife of Trumpian real estate mogul David Strutt (John Lithgow). The stage is set when Strutt spies the shy Beatriz hovering around the edge of the conversation and, mistaking her for the help, asks her to refill his glass of bourbon. Uh-oh.
What’s wonderful about White’s script is that it captures the cadence of how real people speak, even rich white buffoons. The problem is, however incisive the conversational dialogue might be, the film veers into heavy-handed territory when it gets to issues, particularly those involving the environment and the killing of animals. That may be the point of the “Beatriz at Dinner,” but its obviousness lessens the impact of the film.
White specializes in squirmy humor, the kind that has been perfected by Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Though our sympathies are entirely with Beatriz with this entitled crowd, when she does get the rare opportunity to speak, she doesn’t stop. Story after story go on and on, particularly one bizarre one about her father kicking an octopus down a pier, and after a while, your sympathies begin to drift toward the rich swells who have to listen politely — we join them in thinking “Just shut up aleady!” It takes some nerve to reveal an otherwise saintly character like Beatriz to have some major unsaintly flaws, and that nerve only helps to make his script more dimensional.
The supporting cast is solid across the board, but the film is really an acting face-off between Hayek and Lithgow, and both acquit themselves beautifully. For his part, Lithgow could have taken the path of an Alec Baldwin-type caricature of a Trump-like figure, but he declines to go there. Instead he burrows in the character to reveal what makes Doug tick, and the result is a fully-fleshed antagonist, one completely worthy of Beatriz’s wrath.
But, top to bottom, the film really belongs to Salma Hayek, for whom “Beatriz at Dinner” provides her best role since 2002’s “Frida,” for which she was nominated for an Oscar. Hayek modulates Beatriz beautifully, beginning as someone who knows that she does not fit in and decides to hang back to wait to be invited into conversations, which of course rarely happens. Fueled a several glasses of white wine, however, Beatriz’s tongue eventually loosens, and Hayek’s decision to hold back pays off big time when the character just can’t take it anymore. It’s one of Salma Hayek’s best performances ever.
It’s a shame that her performance is overshadowed to a certain degree by the film’s ending. I rarely mention endings in reviews, and I’m not going to discuss this one in detail, only to say that there were many ways that Arteta and White could have wrapped up telling their story, and the ending that they finally selected was, at least for me, unsatisfying. There are certainly many ways that the choice can be defended dramatically, but to me, it called into question almost everything that had come before and what we had come to know about Beatriz. Plan on having coffee after your screening — you’ll want to talk about it.
It’s not exactly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but it’s close. There’s a lot to like in “Beatriz at Dinner,” but oh, what it could have been.
GRADE: B-
