Sorry for a blog vacay, but we had guests in town but nothing that would constitute a dinner party like the one in Miguel Arteta's new film Beatriz at Dinner.
Arteta, director of dark comedy slices of life like Chuck & Buck and The Good Girl, once again teams up with his writing partner, the wry and dry Mike White, for Beatriz.
Car trouble strands masseur/alternative medicine therapist Beatriz (the dressed-down, stunning Salma Hayek) at the oceanside mansion of one of her clients, Kathy (Connie Britten) post-session. She's invited to stay for a small dinner party. The guests include Kathy's stuffy, uptight husband, and his business associates, including the uber-wealthy CEO of a chain of hotels and resorts Doug Strutt (John Lithgow, playing creepy jerk again).
Beatriz's calm, open persona gets battered as she listens to the stories of greed, inanity, and selfishness from the wealthy white people sitting next to her at this lavish dinner table.
As the night moves on, the drinks are consumed, and Lithgow's character reveals himself to be a Trump-like classless, arrogant mogul who has leveled small towns, like the ones that Hayek's character comes from in Mexico, to make way for his luxury resorts. Beatriz moves from apologetic and gracious to silently, and then not so silently, seething.
Many critics have complained that the satire and comedy elements are not scathing enough in the film, while also complaining that the "villains" in the film are too one-dimensional.
I disagree. On reflection, the layers of this film are subtle when they could have turned into the over-the-top dark comedy of something like the liberal vs. conservative battles of the '90s indie The Last Supper . Beatriz approaches a vaguely similar "us vs. them" set-up, but adds the weight of race, class, and environmentalism, to take the idea of the story to a sadly accurate spot in 2017 America.
Although the ending is a bit pessimistic, it's also reflective and powerful and doesn't give anyone an easy out. Beatriz, mainly due to the haunted and silently commanding presence of Hayek, jumps over the danger of sermonizing, to focus on one single person and her small life affected by a wave of greed and narcissism that has flooded over this country in an era of corruption in the highest offices of the land.
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