A triumphant assembly of classically tasty ingredients with superb direction from Matt Johnson makes this coming of age dramedy a feast for the senses.
Instead of delving into the great Anthony Bourdain’s glittering career as a talented executive chef and the eventual heartbreaking fallout this would cause Tony is a lot lighter than one might presume. Matt Johnson is the man tasked with attempting to humanise and understand the troubled, unscrupulous and enigmatic figure and he does so with aplomb.
Fresh off the breezy Nirvanna, The Band, The Show, The Movie Johnson moves away from the experimentation rife in his previous work and serves audiences a lovely, simple slice of Bourdain’s early life as a young tearaway before the all consuming success.
We meet Anthony or Tony as he likes to be known as a loutish, silver tongued nineteen year-old played by a strikingly resemblant Dominic Sessa. He has high ambitions of becoming a writer and has already told his parents and the woman of his dreams Nancy (Emilia Jones) that he has secured a prestigious scholarship. Of course he hasn’t, but he’d never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Instead of owning up after the inevitable rejection he heads to Provincetown, Massachusetts where Nancy is headed for the summer. There’s both a sleepy and frenetic quality to these early moments and exchanges, like Tony is both completely in and out of control wonderfully portrayed by a top of his game Sessa.
With no plan and no money Tony happens to piss off a barwoman at a local bar and gets himself chucked out. Luckily the gruff yet kind owner Ciro (Antonio Banderas) takes pity on him and offers his hammock to sleep on for the summer in exchange for Tony washing dishes at said bar come seafood restaurant ‘The Flagship’. Cue a summer of discovery and mistakes that make the man that everyone came to know and love-hate.
The opening of Tony starts with a quote from the subject’s revered autobiography ‘Kitchen Confidential’ “I was a spoiled, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” and this is essentially what encompasses the film. Tony and the ragtag group of chefs around him are often deplorable people. Sessa remarkably manages to keep him likable in a ruffian, standoffish but deeply vulnerable performance that builds on his breakout role in The Holdovers. He has an old school face, fit for a 70s throwback and feels like a bonafide movie star in the rock and roll register Bourdain himself adopted.
While the script, written by Johnson along with Matthew Miller, Tim White and Trevor White doesn’t offer up any wild experimentation to the coming of age formula or more emphasis for its female characters it is the acting and direction that raise the bar. There is a real inventiveness towards visual form, particularly with montage and the use of voiceover that creates a peppy fluidity befitting of its characters.
A stunning sequence when Tony explains his boring day to Nancy as if he were a lonely writer morphs into profound realisations. The images don’t match what he’s saying but show the newfound camaraderie and purpose the job and its people have provided. Like the person he thought he was is being overtaken by the unbeknownst passion the summer has brought him. An evolution before our very eyes.
While everyone is on top form Antonio Banderas effortlessly shines as Ciro, a passionate and talented chef who swapped Michelin stars for fried starfish. He has a charm and embedded wisdom that ground both Tony and the film. Leo Woodall is also excellent as the deplorable Sal, a drug addled, womanising mess who makes even Tony seem tame. The balancing act is fine and despite the terribly sad eventual demise of Bourdain wedged in the back of the mind the film is surprisingly light without being maudlin. It is Tony’s journey towards his love of food that Johnson is interested in and that is the greatest legacy Bourdain would have wanted to leave.
4 / 5
Maybe one summer during the shaky first steps towards adulthood is the perfect amalgamation of experience to realistically understand a person and Tony enriches and nourishes the soul like a good plate of fish and chips.
