Someone on Twitter made the funny observation that this year has produced three movies that satirize wealthy elites by placing them on a secluded island. The first of these that I saw is interestingly the last that’s getting a wide release: Glass Onion. Then there’s of course Triangle of Sadness, the most enthusiastic to lambaste its’ subjects of ire. And now The Menu, a movie I and several others thought we had an idea of given what the trailer gave away. It was a bad trailer that revealed too much, but one that doesn’t quite show the movie’s full hand; and in fact suggests a couple lesser things the movie doesn’t end up being. Much as the premise of a disciplined, possibly psychotic chef feeding his guests unusual, even mysterious dishes might evoke it, cannibalism plays no part in the film. Neither is it a spin on The Most Dangerous Game, as the marketing seemed to indicate by focusing on one “hunt” sequence of the movie. This is actually a relief, The Menu is cleverer and way more interesting than either of those ideas.
The film is directed by Mark Mylod, his first in over a decade -although in that time he has more than made a name for himself in television, a director on Shameless, Game of Thrones, and most recently on Succession –which might be the closest in tone to what he’s going for here: a sardonic takedown of high society personalities, pretensions, and tastes, matching its’ unnerving tension with a sharp humour. Credit for that must of course be split with the films’ writers Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, who pitch at their best for a cast of ludicrous characters forced into a bizarre and sometimes horrifying situation that shakes their pomposity and privilege. Delightful.
The centrepiece of the movie is Hawthorne, a private restaurant operated by prestigious celebrity chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) located on some offshore island on the American east coast. A dozen guests are brought in for a special dinner, among them an obsessive foodie Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) and his date Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), replacing Tyler’s recent ex-girlfriend on the guest list. Others include an old couple of regulars (Reed Birney and Judith Light), a pompous critic (Janet McTeer) and her publisher (Paul Adelstein), a fading movie star (John Leguizamo) and his ambitious assistant (Aimee Carrero), and a trio of smug business partners with the company that owns Hawthorne (Arturo Castro, Rob Yang, and Mark St. Cyr).
True to its’ title, the movie is largely structured around its’ menu, with each course functioning as an act, and introduced with classy title cards that get more sardonic as the movie goes along. This is reflective of the dishes themselves, which begin as the kind of deconstructed food art pieces you may have seen in some fancy cuisine showcase (in lieu of bread the guests are served a small platter of its’ chemical components), before gradually getting more and more absurd as they incorporate theatrical and ultimately violent elements. And initially everybody seems to be fully on board with the show, except for Margot who isn’t much impressed by the aesthetic food experiments, to the subtle offense of both Tyler and Slowik. There’s a lot of tension in the room even before the chaos, as the staff, led by a scene-stealing Hong Chau as the maitre’d Elsa, is in fascistic lockstep behind Slowik and his quick and stern demands; and the restaurant itself overlooking the water is designed as a bunker, the guests very much locked in without any perceivable way of escape. There are strict rules against substitutions or photographing the food, and its’ evident early on that Slowik doesn’t take too kindly to anyone he has invited there –including his own mother (Rebecca Koon) as the twelfth guest.
His machinations are compelling, especially where they relate to both his view on class, as someone who serves the upper echelons of society, and his own dissipated sense of the value in his work. He provides hints at these issues in one of the early courses where each table is gifted tortilla shells with laser-printed images on them alluding to various transgressions (funniest though is Leguizamo’s -which is just a bad movie he was in). Slowik is altogether an interesting kind of disturbed, and the movie plays well with that in his relationship to Margot, the audience surrogate -with whom he’s closer in spirit than one would expect. Both Fiennes and Taylor-Joy do a great job, the former especially with his unusual, not very convincing Midwestern American accent, calm sociopathy, and chilling power of presence. He also delivers some lines I never thought I’d hear Fiennes say and quite funny ones too.
There’s a degree of horror at work in this movie no question, the danger and intensity is palpable; but it is also one of the best comedies I’ve seen in a while. Mylod directs his ensemble with superb concession to their strengths and quirks of character. And he accentuates the tone of the social satire brilliantly. There’s one brief exchange at the height of the stakes’ severity between Fiennes and Carrero over where she went to college that is just about the funniest moment of the year. The culmination of Tyler’s arc of dickishness and hero-worship is darkly hilarious too, and all throughout the comic attitude of the relationships between servers and guests is very well pronounced. There’s a twisted humour baked into pathos in the character and backstory of Slowik as well, a man who to some sympathy has lost the passion that once drove his cooking -even he doesn’t attach much personal pride to the elaborate and intricate dishes he serves here, as much as he puts on the face that he does. The way that tension resolves between him and Margot is superb -equal parts funny and cathartic, and with that slight twinge of dread still hanging over. It honestly is one of the most wholly satisfying movie endings of the year.
The Menu isn’t the most clever a concept, there are aspects of its’ premise that feel a bit layman -it’s not much a stretch to envision a celebrity chef as a cult leader or a situation in which he entraps his guests. But working off that elementary idea, Mylod, the writers, and the cast create a thrilling, stylish, wickedly exacting satire that could go toe to toe with the others I referenced earlier. It’s one of the more fun movies of the year in any case -if for no other reason than the delightfully weird stuff that Fiennes is doing. And it makes a good case for Mylod’s return to a film-directing career. The dishes being served may not be so appetizing (sorry snobs), but The Menu certainly is.
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