Tony Review:
In 2013, five years before he died by suicide, Anthony Bourdain did a Reddit AMA session. To a question of “What kind of person were you in your twenties?” he replied, in his trademark, staccato, punch-in-the-gut style: “I was a complete asshole. Selfish, larcenous, druggy, loud, stupid, insensitive and someone you would not want to have known. I would have robbed your medicine cabinet had I been invited to your house.” In a contrast to this, for devotees of Bourdain’s no-bullshit, tough guy, masculine mythmaking, the Anthony of Tony can seem timid. He can’t mumble a retort in front of his demanding mother. The only punch he pulls is through a Bruce Lee poster on a wall. But then this is far before his celebrity chef, lunching-with-the-President days. This is an origin story.
Cast: Dominic Sessa, Antonio Banderas, Emilia Jones, and Leo Woodall
Written and directed by: Matt Johnson
Rating: 2.5 stars
We meet Tony in 1975 when he is smug, pretentious and overbearingly 19. He walks around in a shaggy, Jim Morrison hairdo, believing that the world owes him something. He namedrops Kerouac and Orwell, pretends to have read Carl Jung, thinks etymology is a great conversation starter and considers “I am a writer and I have money” to be an appropriate pickup line. After failing to get a writing fellowship, Tony runs away from home, to the beachtown of Provincetown, Massachusetts, hoping to find and woo the unattainable Nancy he chanced upon at a bar. He might have lost out on the dream but he won’t let go of the dame.
The word ‘bildungsroman’ keeps coming up in Tony. The film is a coming-of-age tale for the young Bourdain who is in a desperate need for life to hit him in the face. It does, in the form of salty sea water he is splashed with, a wake-up call by the head chef (Antonio Banderas) at whose house he finds himself after a night of heavy drinks and heartbreak. The chef gets him a job of cleaning dishes at his seafood joint, which Tony does with clumsiness and disdain. All while trying to get into Nancy’s pants and telling himself and others that he is actually a writer and that the restaurant job is a mere gig.
There is a certain charm to Tony, aided by The Holdovers fame Dominic Sessa’s contained performance as an aimless young man who will go on to become a legend. Based on certain chapters of Kitchen Confidential, the film works better without the baggage of being a Bourdain biopic. It is an old school, young-writer-learns a- thing-or-two-about-life kind of movie which once would have had reruns on Romedy Now. It’s less guts and veal and more oyster and cream sauce. Corrupted by The Bear, I expected the kitchen sequences to be as feverish as a command centre but they were more lighthearted, like a Sunday brunch. If the motive was to make a film which is subtle and sweet writer and director Matt Johnson largely succeeds. This film is less the madness of Hunter S. Thompson and more the epiphany of Hemingway. A sequence even has Tony and the chef trying to catch a big fish à la The Old Man and the Sea.
The movie starts off with promise but somewhere starts confusing mundanity with metanoia. This is a story of Tony letting go of his self-centeredness, of him finally realising the importance of the people around him. He gets life but I would have liked him to get it through something more than scraping molluscs. Tony is a film that often felt like it is actively avoiding the now bastardised Bourdain bravado. I am not saying I wanted a dish of it but a dash wouldn’t have hurt. The film often seemed clueless at times, getting into the American coming-of-age film mould whenever it was running out of ideas. It wasn’t exactly a sumptuous meal. More like a Bourdain starter-pack which leaves you wanting for more.
