Beatriz at Dinner

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 (Salma Hayek) is an environmentalist and new age masseuse. She goes into a gated community to work on rich client Kathy (Connie Britton). Kathy gushes over her due to her work with Kathy's cancer-strickened daughter. It's been a bad time for Beatriz. Someone had killed her beloved goat. After her car breaks down, Kathy invites her to the dinner party that night. Beatriz gets into a rolling argument with the main guest, rich arrogant land developer Doug Strutt (John Lithgow). Her family was devastated when a hotel developer moved into her Mexican village. She objects to his big game hunting and her callous treatment of the environment.

This is an interesting little indie of a committed leftist dropped in the middle of the privileged crowd. There is a good little conflict. Lithgow is unrepentant and I really like his "we're all dying" take on the world. I want more of that from writer Mike White. In the end, there is little more of 75 minutes of actual screen time. The movie is begging for more with Hayek and Lithgow. They could have had a free-wheeling debate. Instead, it goes for the cheap kill and forgets it with a dream reversal. This movie goes halfway done the road and then it pulls over to the side of the road before reaching its true destination.

When her car breaks down, a faith healer finds herself an unexpected guest at her wealthy client's business dinner, but a dark cloud looms ...

A small movie with a big theme. The lead actress is excellent and performs the after-dinner song beautifully. The pace is a little patchy, but the sets and camera work are lush, the music perfectly judged.

What holds this back is the failure to put any substance into the other guests. It's true that wealthy people and their hangers-on are often deadly dull in their pursuit of power and authority, yet there's always some flash of insight to them - a fundamental truth in how they outgrasp the rest, even if they're not fully aware of the implications. That flash is lacking, and so we get a selection of yes-men and -women with off-colour jokes and petty gripes, lorded over by a psychopath with a banal philosophy on the finiteness of existence. Perhaps the screenplay should have cornered the hostess, forcing her out of her good-manners and into a choice over the protagonist's fate.

Without that complexity, the theme isn't fleshed out, and relies on sympathy with the protagonist and nice touches, leaving a vague sense of great injustice.

One flaw in the screenplay is the leaving of the keys in the expensive car, which isn't revisited and just serves to show the sense of security of the guests. If you bring a loaded gun into a scene, you better use it.

Overall: Nice, but too simple.

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.

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.