In the grand tradition of dinner parties gone wrong -- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Carnage, this year's The Dinner -- Beatriz at Dinner starts innocently enough before descending through awkward humor, black comedy, social satire, and ultimately a sort of nihilistic melodrama. As everyone drinks and reveals more about themselves, the more they begin to hate each other. More accurately, the one outsider in their midst becomes hated by everyone else, who are more or less mirrors of each other, even though she warmly welcomed everyone with hugs and offers of free massages. But the film takes what would normally be a marginal moment -- the Latina maid rolling her eyes at the rich white master's silly prejudice and then returning to her assigned role -- and unpacks it into a whole film. Really, this flick is more of a play, and indeed might be more effective on stage (with more dialogue, which the film would have benefited from), where the spectacle of food and drama mix so very well.
This dinner tosses ethnic prejudice and class inequality into a blender filled with capitalist hierarchy and environmental violence and processes it until the gooey paste chokes our awareness of what's really happening. In a very real sense, we are seeing the proceedings from Beatriz's perspective, where all these elements are interconnected, and as the meal progresses we sympathize with her anger and indignation and we get as bewildered until we want to lash out as she does. In fact, during her feverish revenge fantasy at the film's climax, I heard one young woman cheering from the back of the theater. It's hard not to cheer; after the verbal sparring and rhetorical vitriol of the dinner, it only makes sense that the poisonous backstabbing becomes physical in some way.
While Beatriz may not be on par with the indictment of racism in Get Out, for example, but it serves to paint a fairly accurate portrait of early 2017 anxieties felt by Trump's America. We have the oily man who loves violence at the head of the table (John Lithgow, whose knowing performance never winks at us, to his immeasurable credit). We have his sycophantic supporters seeking their own social promotion (Chloe Sevigny and Transparent's Amy Landecker and Jay Duplass). We have the white liberal elite whose commonplace hypocrisies allow them to be comfortable without sacrifice (American Horror Story's Connie Britton). And we have the lone Other (poor, ethnic, female whose religion and lifestyle are distinctly marginal) who is forced into awkward and dangerous situations, ganged up on by the others, and ultimately bereft of the hope that has sustained her. Salma Hayek (Frida) plays the stripped-down, grounded Beatriz with earnestness and honesty, though her eccentric presence in the polished white film might make you chuckle at times. But she's not a clown by any means; her out-of-place figure is one of sympathy for us. It's an awesome performance of a child of the earth who loves to love and who profoundly feels everything. And, while all characters are easily described here, the actors all play expertly and knowingly in the sweet spot between realism and caricature.
In retrospect, I'm not even sure who the real villain is in this flick. It's easy to say Lithgow as the mogul is the big baddie; he even spits out several lines that could have been taken from Ted Levine's Warden in Shutter Island about violence and the death of the world. Can we really blame him though? He may be fiddling while Rome burns, and his predatory corporate devastation is at sharp odds with the film's pastoral images of life on a tropical river, but he's the devil we know. The movie's stab at the heart is delivered by Connie Britton's Kathy, the rich white "friend" who insists Beatriz stays for dinner and involves herself with people any sensitive person would know are not her friends. Her lack of perception gives way to open shame and eventual passive-aggressive cruelty, and her self-deception and betrayal of Beatriz are so complete that she doesn't even feel sorry about her behavior. Take note: If the scene hits you a little too hard, it means you have some soul-searching to do, too.
Its too-brief duration on screen has the taste of melodrama and dark comedy, befitting the tradition its furthers, but in the last twenty minutes or so the filmmakers lace the brew with shocking horror and Greek tragedy. Whether they are trying to reference Kate Chopin or a transcendent earth religion, the last scene bothered me because it spells defeat for our heroine. Yet at the same time, we completely understand her pain and loss of hope; it's a love letter and a fierce warning for those of us in despair over the state of our country and our world. Beatriz, in her loving and sacrificial way, loses hope so that we don't have to.
IMDb: Beatriz at Dinner
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