Beatriz at Dinner

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.

Greetings again from the darkness. The movie industry frequently sources societal worries, concerns, issues and hot topics. It's been less than 6 months, but here come the anti-Trump movies. Of course some will have clever disguises for their message, while others will slap us across the face. This re-teaming of The Good Girl director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White actually uses both approaches.

Salma Hayek stars as Beatriz, a masseuse and holistic healer, who comes awfully close to being an angel on earth … unless she's guzzled a bit too much white wine. Beatriz fights southern California traffic in her clunky VW as she rushes from her gig at the cancer center to Cathy's (Connie Britton) Orange County cliffside mansion. See, Cathy is hosting a dinner party for her husband's (David Warshofsky) business associates and she simply must have her massage prior to such a stressful event – after all, she did plan the menu. When Beatriz's car stalls in Cathy's driveway, she is invited to stay for the dinner party.

Things get awkward once the actual guests arrive. Alex (Jay Duplass) and his wife Shannon (Chloe Sevigny) are the young, entitled types so enticed by the fancy house and global traveling lifestyles on which they are on the brink. It should be noted that Mr. Duplass cleans up nicely and Ms. Sevigny spends much of the movie smiling – a look for which she's not normally associated. The real squirming occurs once Doug Strutt (John Lithgow) and his shallow third wife Jenna (Amy Landecker, "Transparent") arrive.

Beatriz and Strutt are polar opposites with contrasting lifestyles and character. She is a mystical presence with a deep connection to Mother Earth and all living beings. He is the Trump-like figure – charismatic, manipulating and laser-focused on the brass ring. She coddles her pet goat in her bedroom to protect it from a crazy neighbor, while he ignores the rare birds nesting on the valuable land he wants scraped for his newest development.

It's by no means a superhero movie, but Beatriz is presented as a Mexican-born working class (minimal make-up, functional clothing and shoes) Wonder Woman, while Strutt is the ultra villain out to destroy the planet, one rhinoceros at a time. She views him as "The Source" of Earth's pain, while he tries to laugh her off as a novelty act. It's Cathy and her husband who are most taken aback by the direct words of Beatriz, as they have considered her a "family friend" since she helped their daughter through a health scare. How dare she ruin their dinner party! There is a beautiful aerial shot of the Orange County mega-mansions, but most of the uncomfortable moments are derived through the ongoing duel of angelic Beatriz vs. the poisonous topics of politics and profit. There is no subtlety in the message, but having two talented actors go head to head, does make it more palatable.

Found nothing funny at all in this movie. The rich white people are shallow and selfish and make their money by ruining the planet and the lives impacted by their so-called 'developments'.

On the other hand, Beatriz is a highly relatable character bewildered by these people.

Beatriz at Dinner sells itself as the "first important film of the Trump Era," a galvanizing must-see sparring between two embodiment's of the modern American political landscape. In the blue corner the genteel, multi-cultural, bilingual immigrant Beatriz (Hayek) and the red, the boorish super-rich real-estate mogul Doug Strutt (Lithgow). Who will come out on top? Surely not the audience.

The optimal title for this movie should have been Beatriz and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. She begins her morning feeding her dogs and calming her bleating pet lamb before driving down to work at a ramshackle clinic in downtown L.A.. She claims to be a healer - massage, reiki, rolfing - the kind of stuff that would sound like hokum if Beatriz wasn't so emphatically a believer. Her last task of the day involves a long drive to Malibu to meet with a wealthy client. Her car dies on the driveway, thus her hosts reluctantly invite her to a dinner they are throwing to celebrate a new business venture.

The movie's rising action unfolds largely as you would expect. The slight misreading of social cues and awkward culture clashes turn into a snowballing array of devilishly clever faux pas. The dinner itself, while never quite as caustic as it should be, nevertheless showcases the characters as a menagerie of conflicting personalities all containing themselves to conform to social graces.

Then much like Beatriz after one too many glasses of white wine, the movie just seems to forget itself. It sidesteps the character dynamics it so lovingly created and all but deflates any chance of investment. Beatriz and Doug by this point are no longer human but pallid adversarial mouthpieces that don't even talk at one another but through one another. And they do so in the most sanctimonious of ways, diluting what and how they think in the form of talking-points that'd be better served on someone's back bumper. "All tears flow from the same source;" "what the world needs is jobs;" "the world is dying;" "there's way more satisfaction in building things." These are the kinds of grandiose statements you can expect from this movie, dispensed like oh so many socio-political McNuggets.

By the end of the evening, it becomes clear that director Miguel Arteta and screenwriter Mike White have a thematic endgame in mind. What results is a conclusion that no doubt feels forced and too little too late, though given the film's lack of plot, it should get brownie points for actually getting us there. But once we do get there, the shallow vanity, vitriolic banter and the ever present power dynamics all seem to be beside the point. Much like Blue State (2007), Fast Food Nation (2006) and other such movies, Beatriz at Dinner isn't really a movie so much as it is an overt statement that forgot the cameras were rolling.

Have we seriously gotten to the point where we have forgotten how to do satire? Given the high-concept, Beatriz at Dinner could have been a less sophomoric version of The Last Supper (1995) with flutters of Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) painted in for good measure. Instead we're given a film that's just not enough of anything. It's not aggressive enough, its not satirical enough, it's not nuanced enough - heck it's not even sanctimonious enough! It's sits there in a drunken fugue, angrily seething before ambling away in a worrisome state. If I were you, I wouldn't encourage movies like this by following it.

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.