Beatriz at Dinner

I'm a great fan of Miguel Arteta and Mike White's work. They travel a road that will take us to unusual places. I don't know if unusual is the right word because all of a sudden everything seems familiar, perhaps is the way Arteta and White got us there that is unusual. Opposite worlds sitting at the same table. Selma Hayek is wonderful and every though that crosses her heart and mind is perfectly visible to us. John Lithgow finds a new and disturbing face to his gallery of startling characters and Connie Britton is sublime as the hostess walking a thin line between empathy and something else. Wow! It really grabbed me and shook me. So, a highly recommended movie trying to survive in a sea of Avengers and remakes. Bravo!

Beatriz made everyone at dinner so uncomfortable and squirmy, and they deserved every second of it.

People who take from and abuse the world being called on it is one of my favorite movie genres. Making the excuse that we're all here for a short time, so why not just enjoy ourselves is the most selfish thing ever said. People with the resources should be helping others in some way, not just helping themselves.

Salma is fantastic as Beatriz. Lithgow is too, as the smarmy billionaire. This movie will give you a lot to think about. It may not be for everyone, and the outcome is not completely satisfying. I thought I was getting a comedy, seeing as it was written by Mike White, who gave us School of Rock.

Written by Mike White, Beatriz at Dinner completes an unofficial trilogy with the screenwriter's Year of the Dog and the HBO series Enlightened. All three of these works are about middle aged women searching for relevance in modern society via politics. This one is a bit smaller in scale, a bit less comedic, but it shares a lot of traits with the other film and TV series. Salma Hayek stars (and is fantastic) as a holistic healer and masseuse. She is called to a rich client's home, where her car breaks down after the job. Stuck there overnight, she is invited by the client (Connie Britton) to stay overnight and dine at their party. There's a bit of fish-out-of-water comedy here, but it's more painfully awkward than funny, and the class issues are at time gut wrenching. One of the other guests is a rich mogul (John Lithgow), whom Hayek seems to know from the past. Perhaps fate has brought them together for a reason? Lithgow is an obvious stand-in for Donald Trump. Frankly, all the wealthy characters, even the relatively friendly Britton, are despicable, but White doesn't do much to stack the deck against them. They certainly don't speak in any way that feels egregiously unfair. Lithgow definitely chews into the role, but, hey, so does Donald Trump. I'm not entirely satisfied with the ending, and I would say this is the weakest of the trilogy, but it's easily the most thoughtful and most thought-provoking film I've seen all summer. 8/10.

Just having funny and tragic elements in a movie doesn't make it dark comedy; that takes a careful and very talented touch. Think Death to Smoochy, Harold and Maude, or Mel Brooks' To Be or Not To Be. But Beatriz at Dinner is just an admixture of the extremes that beats you upside the head. You can't be sure what you're getting hit with, and the elements don't make a greater whole. The premise is a class contrast. Hayek's healer/masseuse is befriended and employed by a couple whose child she helped through the post-chemo misery of Hodgkin's cancer treatment. Her car breaks down at their wealthy-enclave home, and they invite her to stay for an important dinner with their super-wealthy patron. Hilarity and tragedy ensue. Weird moment that may demonstrate my point: Beatriz is portrayed both as a deep, sensitive and capable healer, and as an airhead. Someone at the dinner table describes a painful kidney stone incident, and, trying to contribute from her field of expertise, she chimes in with a holistic-sounding remedy, a tea made from beets, rhubarb, and dandelion flower. Those are on the rogue's list for kidney stone sufferers: they're among the six things that generate kidney stones at a rate 10 times more intense than the second tier of danger. So it could be an obscure inside joke, horrible research, or a loop they intended to close later but left on the cutting room floor.

Beatriz (Salma Hayek) is an environmentalist and new age masseuse. She goes into a gated community to work on rich client Kathy (Connie Britton). Kathy gushes over her due to her work with Kathy's cancer-strickened daughter. It's been a bad time for Beatriz. Someone had killed her beloved goat. After her car breaks down, Kathy invites her to the dinner party that night. Beatriz gets into a rolling argument with the main guest, rich arrogant land developer Doug Strutt (John Lithgow). Her family was devastated when a hotel developer moved into her Mexican village. She objects to his big game hunting and her callous treatment of the environment.

This is an interesting little indie of a committed leftist dropped in the middle of the privileged crowd. There is a good little conflict. Lithgow is unrepentant and I really like his "we're all dying" take on the world. I want more of that from writer Mike White. In the end, there is little more of 75 minutes of actual screen time. The movie is begging for more with Hayek and Lithgow. They could have had a free-wheeling debate. Instead, it goes for the cheap kill and forgets it with a dream reversal. This movie goes halfway done the road and then it pulls over to the side of the road before reaching its true destination.