Eat the rich | East Bay Express
One horror course, another refined camp
As Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter movies, Ralph Fiennes expresses a self-reflexive sense of dread and satisfaction whenever he causes someone harm. His regenerative ability to summon evil is a discovery process that energizes him. In Mark Mylod menu, Fiennes returns to the screen as Chef Slowik, a man with a similar appetite.
The difference between the two characters is that Slowik’s carefully planned revenge scheme doesn’t actually follow through. When someone contradicts him, the chef’s open-mouthed anger seems to weaken, as if the blood in his heart has been frozen.
Fiennes replaces Voldemort’s black hood with a white kitchen jacket – but the effect is the same. In his kitchen, Slowik rules his kingdom with the might of an exiled emperor. To get to Hawthorne, his restaurant on the island, diners must board a small boat that whisks them away from the mainland. Coke in the Faroe Islands is a real-life equivalent, a reliable source of inspiration for the film. They serve haute cuisine, minimalist meals there in an impressively remote setting.
But menu it’s not a kitchen adventure movie. The cinematography is as lush as anything else Chef’s Table. Eye-catching, appreciative shots of modern interior design alternate with microscopic close-ups of jewel-toned gels and architectural mezzanines. Where Chef’s Table misses the irony—restaurants are temples to crop gods and their helpers—menu it is filled with it.
Nothing about Hawthorne is meant to be admired. Neither the food, the chef nor the tasteful decor. Expensive artwork and collection of neutral tones are acting as camouflage to disguise the prison walls behind them.
menu is an “eat the rich” fable and a mix of two different genres. One of the ingredients is pure horror. A group of wealthy diners are trapped in a madman’s lair. Suspension is built into the setup. Will Slowik take them down Agatha Christie-style, one at a time, or all at once? As the pot begins to boil, the screenwriters divert our attention from the dinners and their impending doom with simmering camp monologues.
Slowik, his employee Elsa (Hong Chau), restaurant critic Lillian (Janet McTeer) and food guest Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) are all a little bent. Slowik doesn’t just describe each course before it’s served. It gives a feverish fascination. Elsa turns the harmless job of being a greeter into a menacing specter. She seems to have escaped from a Grimm’s fairy tale. Every time he opens his mouth, metaphorically, frogs and spiders fall from his tongue. Lillian and Tyler’s tribute to the chef sounds sybaritic, the statements about his cooking are beside the point.
menu It destroys every aspect of fine dining pretensions by promising to kill a dozen hideously rich people who have spent thousands of dollars on the Chef Slowik experience. But without Tyler meeting Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), Slowik would have no antagonist and the audience would have no one to root for.
There is no romantic spark between Fiennes and Taylor-Joy. There is something better. Both actors have unfettered access to their inner villains. No one in the kitchen or dining room stands in front of Chef Slowik. The guests are mesmerized by the performative rituals he is performing in the kitchen. Margot sees Slowik for what he is, a bully. After the cook attacks the guests in terror, Margot doesn’t let her fear get the better of her. She understands how to fight.
Saw Peter Greenaway’s film The cook, the thief, his wife and her lover (1989) suspended in ether, menu may not have materialized. Both films wrestle with class conflict and the absurdity of paying exorbitant amounts for a meal just because you can. In Greenaway’s film, the cook is unwilling to do harm. It provides a space in the kitchen for the wife and her lover to socialize. He delivers poetic monologues about the food he serves. Thirty years later, menu mocks this approach to cooking and defines anyone tangentially involved in the restaurant industry as a ripe glutton who deserves punishment.
‘menu’ now playing in Bay Area theaters.