Sundance London: Beatriz At Dinner review: Dir. Miguel Arteta (2017)

Beatriz At Dinner review: Miguel Arteta re-teams with screenwriter Mike White for this tale of a dinner party with an uninvited guest – an event that leads to some eye-opening consequences for all involved.

Beatriz At Dinner review, Paul Heath, June 2017.

Kicking off the slate of thirteen films at this year’s now very well established UK tour of America’s famous independent film festival is this deeply absorbing drama focused upon a a dinner party at a mansion in the coastal city of Newport Beach in southern California.

Miguel Arteta‘s (Youth In Revolt) tight 84 minute feature opens to Salma Hayek‘s Beatriz, an immigrant living in the greater Los Angeles area, waking in a cramped apartment to a bleating goat and an over-excited dog, both of who are seemingly housed inside. Beatriz, an immigrant from Mexico clearly lives alone and makes an honest living from holistic treatment of massage and physical therapy. We see her on a standard day to her place of work, a rented office at a cancer treatment centre in Santa Monica, the forty-something attending to patients using alternative therapies. We follow her, complete with portable massage table and rusted, beat-up up Volkswagen to a huge mansion in the swanky area of Newport Beach, the home to Cathy (Connie Britton) and Grant (David Warshofsky), two clients and ‘friends’ who have formed a bond following a professional history involving their now cancer-free daughter.

Cathy is indulging in a paid-massage session with Beatriz before the couple host a high-society dinner with work colleagues, comprising of couple Alex (Jay Duplass) and his wife, played by Chloë Sevigny, and also corporate CEO Doug Strutt (a very strong John Lithgow) and his third wife (Amy Landecker), to celebrate a big deal going through between their respective firms. Just before the guests start to arrive, and as Beatriz goes to leave, it becomes apparently that her car won’t start. Stuck in the grounds of sprawling mansion with a lift home hours away, Cathy invites Beatriz to stay for the lavish dinner, an event that brings many issues and talking points to its table.

Arteta’s new film, one which reunites him with screenwriter Mike White (The Good Girl), is one which is extremely tight, both in length and pacing. It’s so lean that i almost feels rushed in places, the filmmakers giving much more time to the set-up rather than the execution of the dinner at the forefront of the narrative. The one main location gives a very theatrical play-like feel to proceedings and its un-flashy approach gives the six main actors the opportunity to shine. Clearly the strongest are Salma Hayek in a near career-best as the title character and Lithgow as her social opponent Strutt. The latter in particular manages to provoke annoyance and sheer unlikeability with just the gentle nod of a head or a slight raised eyebrow, enough to make every scene he’s involved in totally uncomfortable in his treatment of Beatriz and her rather unfortunate placing at this table of alpha males and doting curtsying wives. Duplass is particularly slimy as the Mexico-loving laywer – “I love Mexico. Cancun is awesome” – just one of the many well-placed lines exampling the shallow lives of the rich and pretentious, the polar opposite of Hayek’s character’s embracing, deeply spiritual Beatriz.

The point of the film is that we empathise with Beatriz all of the way through her very painful meal; I guess as we have all probably sat a table and felt some of the same at various points in our own lives. White’s clever script and Arteta’s neat direction hurtle us towards a perhaps predictable ending, though the screenwriter has some curve-balls saved for the climactic final reel so do stick with it.

Beatriz at Dinner is a well crated social drama comedy that surprises, enthrals and promises not to let you go home hungry.

Beatriz At Dinner review, Paul Heath.

Beatriz At Dinner plays at the Sundance London film festival on June 1st, 2017.