The philosophy of French cuisine leans heavily into the art of reduction. In Canadian director Matt Johnson’s new film, Tony, he applies that approach with considerable success to his subject, the late Anthony Bourdain.
The year is 1975. The place is mostly Provincetown, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, where the nineteen-year-old “Tony” has gone in pursuit of his first love, Nancy, whom he had met in high school. As he would later concede in his best-selling memoir, Kitchen Confidential (2000), Tony was naive, narcissistic, full of literary ambition and full of himself. After a night of alcoholic indulgence and a crude pass at the female bartender, he manages to get himself forcibly evicted from a local seafood restaurant and tavern; spend the night on the street outside; and have the contents of his wallet (money stolen from his parents) removed. All in all, not a promising start for a superstar of the culinary, literary and broadcast worlds.
Fortunately, the owner of the iconic establishment in question, the Lobster Pot, offers Tony a lifeline. Given his lack of money, he can survive the summer by washing dishes at the restaurant and sleeping in a hammock at the proprietor’s home. From these relatively spartan circumstances emerge lessons in humility and a lifelong passion.
Matt Johnson (BlackBerry, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie) also produced the screenplay for Tony. It works, largely because it imbues its characters with distinctive, believable personalities. Indeed, a sense of melancholy permeates much of this coming-of-age comedy-drama, as Tony has his oversized ego bruised (and sometimes burned) on a daily basis. The writing, acting and directing are generally so well calibrated that you can readily appreciate the picture as something other than a famous person’s origin story.
Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers) plays the title character: an aspiring writer from a well-to-do New York/New Jersey family, a rebellious teen already well acquainted with fancy words, lofty goals and controlled substances. (Anthony Bourdain’s father was an executive with Columbia Records’ classical division, and his mother was a New York Times editor.) He already sees himself as a man of the world, while trying to conceal his failure at obtaining a literary fellowship at Vassar College. Sessa comfortably navigates the transitions and contradictions from brash to vulnerable to resourceful, while sporting impressive sideburns.
As the love interest, Nancy, the British actress Emilia Jones (CODA) has less to do, yet successfully balances the story as the slightly older and much more mature half of a sputtering relationship. She and Tony share a perfectly-scripted moment as she takes photos of him around town.
Another Brit, Leo Woodall (The White Lotus), elevates his character, Sal, beyond a mere supporting role. Sal impresses Tony with his no-holds-barred lifestyle as a hard-drinking cook and fisherman who casually seduces women and does cocaine to maintain his energy while on the job. After getting himself fired for striking the restaurant owner, he becomes an object lesson in self-destructiveness. His reckless confidence even suggests an older, real-life Bourdain.
Then we have “Chef”--we only know him by that name–the Brazilian-born proprietor of the chaotic Lobster Pot. Antonio Banderas, whose career has evolved from the films of acclaimed Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar to an Academy Award nomination for Pain and Glory (2019) to the inspired silliness of the Puss in Boots character in the Shrek franchise, gives a wonderfully understated performance here. The grizzled Chef gamely tries to maintain standards of conduct and preparation in his modest Cape Cod establishment, all the while claiming not to miss his previous career as a Culinary Institute of America grad with a resume including Michelin-starred restaurants. He suppresses. He indulges. He prays. He befriends. However reluctantly at first, he mentors the undisciplined Tony. The morning pails of water become not only a daily ritual for the two of them, but also a consistently amusing visual refrain.
Working on location in Provincetown, cinematographer Michael Bauman, an Oscar nominee for last year’s One Battle After Another, lights and shoots the picture with an excellent feel for mood and texture. The scenes inside Chef’s home and at sea stand out. Composer Jay McCarrol gets credit for a suitably discreet and moody, if slightly repetitious, score.
Despite its subject, Tony will not dazzle you with its “importance.” It doesn’t want to. It wants to tell a story about fundamental life lessons and happy accidents–how a 19-year-old kid becomes a man and an agent of his own career. On balance, we already know so much about the later story of Tony-become-Anthony Bourdain. Long before you hear the inevitable pop standard “Old Cape Cod,” Matt Johnson just wants you to appreciate the character, while artfully rooting his story in a very particular time and place.
