by Harry Varvaressos
Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Dominic Sessa, Antonio Banderas, Emilia Jones, Stavros Halkias
Intro:
… an invigorating biopic tempered with tropes, honouring an iconoclast whose roguish charm embodied something elementally human.
Though Hollywood has sifted through the dregs of just about every IP you can (or can’t) recall, there’s one cinematic universe yet to be entirely plumbed: our own.
In this hyperreal age, studios are scrambling to make superheroes of beloved historical figures, in the hopes of gratifying their reverent fanbases’ parasocial attachments and securing awards for their mimetic stars.
No doubt Jean Baudrillard is rolling in his grave, clutching his sides with laughter.
But for every saccharine Wikipedia visualisation, there’s a historical account of genuine insight that tempers the taste. The best of these have something in common: they don’t feel like biopics. They detail the lives of individuals you haven’t necessarily heard of (Henry Hill in Goodfellas), complicate the mythology of those you have (Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network), or offer such cinematic richness that the “true story” factor is subsumed by the stylistic approach (Jiro Horikoshi in The Wind Rises – probably the best ever, if you’re asking.)
Yet, as Lionel Hutz once reminded us, there’s the truth, and then the truth.
Indie darling Matt Johnson plays with fire by choosing a subject so fervently idolised. But, in his entrée to the Hollywood big leagues, the Blackberry director wisely sidesteps the freshly dug cradle-to-the-grave. His pitch: what if the narrative pre-dated the subject’s renown by multiple decades?
We meet Anthony – though only his mother calls him that – at the tender age of nineteen. After he’s rejected for a writing fellowship, the teenage lout (Dominic Sessa) escapes to Cape Cod, aiming to win the heart of quick-witted stunner Nancy (Emilia Jones). When things inevitably go awry, he finds himself dish-washing for an exacting chef (Antonio Banderas), all the while befriending his uncouth kitcheners (Leo Woodall and Stavros Halkias), discovering the joys of drugs and alcohol, and spinning a web of lies to impress his spoken-for crush.
Refreshingly, Tony has very little to do with Bourdain: the man, the myth, the legend. In fact, if you called the film Jeff or Andy and removed the annotated slideshow over the credits, it would work just fine. Because this is, really, a coming-of-age yarn in a biopic’s clothing, in the fond seaside tradition of The Way, Way Back or Summer of ‘42. And, like the velvety Patti Page song which closes it out, Johnson’s piece is executed with such warmth and sincerity that it feels more sweetly nostalgic than it does clichéd.
That’s not to say that Tony doesn’t have its share of surprises. By taking a back-seat to the Hollywood “buildings roman,” Bourdain’s life story provides revelatory detail without hindering the economy of Johnson’s narrative. Various culinary vignettes – the rite of passage of shucking oysters, spearing fresh tuna at the crack of dawn in a shaky canoe, a “clambake” on an idyllic beach – crackle with freshness and authenticity. Accordantly, the truthful basis of the story helps to suspend our disbelief as various plot contrivances crowd into the camp of “could never, ever happen today.”
And then there’s Johnson’s lively ensemble. Like the recent horror hit Obsession, Tony weaponises the unfamiliarity of its actors to make well-worn material feel newly vital. Sessa is vividly loutish and insecure, Jones, perhaps underwritten but nonetheless very charming, and Woodall, a standout as amoral hedonist Sal. These exciting talents are tastefully seasoned with the old-fashioned star power of Banderas, who mines his greatest hits as the impassioned Spaniard doling out exotic proverbs, before surprising us with a third act turn towards genuine pathos.
And yet, for all this talk of novelty, Johnson’s film works because it’s so familiar. Adolescent angst, young love, rocking tunes, generation gaps filled with glittering oceans: individuation in a single summer or your money back. It’s a timeworn formula that persists for good reason, and Johnson honours it with enthusiasm and a vibrant sense of humour. By eschewing modern biopic tropes for these more vintage varieties, he manages to concoct something zesty enough to surprise, yet leaving a honeyed aftertaste that’s ever so homely and comforting.
This will, for some, feel out of step with Bourdain’s legacy. Yet, despite his reputation as the culinary world’s Hunter S. Thompson, Bourdain’s avuncular warmth resonated more strongly than his countercultural bluster. He was an old-school romantic with a heroin habit, a loving father with a rakish earring, and a punk television presenter who appealed to a huge mainstream audience. People may have gossiped about his vices, but opened their hearts because of his virtues. Tony is a fitting testament to this contradiction: an invigorating biopic tempered with tropes, honouring an iconoclast whose roguish charm embodied something elementally human.
P.S. Tony does make one wonder: could the biopic genre help filmmakers secure funding for the kind of low-scale drama that is increasingly infeasible in today’s theatrical landscape? Food for thought…
