I am a monster. No, was a monster. And a whore. But tonight, everything I’m doing is pure. Egoless. And, at last, the pain is almost gone.
In The Menu, Ralph Fiennes gives a tour de force performance as Chef Slowik, a by turns benevolent and dictatorial chef who presides over Hawthorne, an exclusive, expensive and very, very artistic restaurant on an isolated island. The movie takes place over the course of just one evening at that restaurant, but this is far from the normal evening of exquisite food and artistic expression one would typically get at Hawthorne. There are other plans at work here tonight.
The film is a bit of a hash tonally, if you know what I mean. There are certainly elements of both thriller and horror here with violence dished out (okay, okay, I’ll stop) on a few occasions and a slow sense of tension as the evening progresses. It’s also a very funny movie, a riff/spoof on foodie culture in specific and luxury culture in general. But I was surprised by Fiennes’ performance and by the way his character is written; he’s not a gleeful villain and he’s not giving a performance to the balcony. He has big moments, sure, but the overall vibe of the character is one of deep sorrow. He’s been brought to the point he is when the evening begins by a variety of factors, some within his control and some out and some we don’t even know about, but he’s a deeply sad and conflicted man. And while the plans certainly include some death and destruction, Slowik’s point here seems to be to walk his guests through an evening of fine dining that will also help them understand that they’re all deeply toxic in one way or another. There’s a certain amount of pleasure in seeing these rich and pretentious people forced to face their flaws and failures, but the movie also humanizes many of them in surprising ways.
The ensemble is really stacked with great character actors all around. Special note should go to the always wonderful Hong Chau as Slowik’s second in command. John Leguizamo actually gives a genuinely good performance, the first one he’s given in I couldn’t even tell you how long, as a preening moviestar. Janet McTeer, Paul Adelstein, Aimee Carrero, Reed Birney, Judith Light & Rebecca Koon all give excellent supporting turns as well. But the other two characters besides Slowik that the movie really focuses on are both really well-written, sharp characters that are also brilliantly played. Nicholas Hoult is Tyler, an insufferable food-snob that’s ultimately really a shallow dilettante that comes to represent everything Slowik most despises. Anya Taylor-Joy’s Margot is different; we find out early on that she’s filling in for Tyler’s original date, who cancelled at the last minute, and this means that just by her very presence, she’s broken one of the fundamental rules of the restaurant: “There are no substitutions at Hawthorne,” Slowik says more than once, but that’s exactly what Margot is. And to a man as accustomed to control as Slowik, the sharp tang of this added ingredient is enough to throw him off his game. The evening has been perfectly planned with every ingredient carefully balanced, both on the plate and in the room, but who and what is Margot exactly? Margot is perfectly written, a sharp-tongued merciless cynic that has little patience for either the people at the table or the man in charge of the menu. It’s in the clash of all these characters that I found the movie to just really spark to life.
And while I said above that the movie is tonally all over the place, it really worked for me. There was just an energy and a vibe to this movie that just kept surprising me and I kind of couldn’t look away from the screen. I think the central trio of the movie all give great performances with Fiennes especially just delivering another note-perfect performance in a career full of them. The script is funny and dark and incisive and character-based. And at the end of the night, it just kind of landed exactly the way I wanted it to. It’s just a truly delightful, delightful movie. 4 stars.
tl;dr – sharp, funny, surprisingly sad script manages many tones without feeling like a mess; features great performances and a witty, dark energy that really landed for me. 4 stars.