The Anthony Bourdain Biopic Is a Perfect Little Movie - Slate Magazine

What the report says

Slate Magazine reviewed “Tony,” a new Anthony Bourdain biopic from Canadian filmmaker Matt Johnson, describing it as a successful, modestly scaled origin story about the late chef, writer and television personality. The film is loosely drawn from the early portions of Bourdain’s 2000 memoir “Kitchen Confidential” and focuses on a single formative summer when Bourdain, played by Dominic Sessa, is 19.

According to Slate, Johnson’s film departs from some real-life details for dramatic shape, compressing Bourdain’s multiple Provincetown, Massachusetts, restaurant summers into one season at a seafood spot called the Flagship. The story follows young Tony after he leaves suburban New Jersey, lies to his family about a writing fellowship, and arrives in Provincetown with little direction. After a rough first night, he is taken in by Ciro, a restaurateur played by Antonio Banderas, who gives him work washing dishes.

The review highlights the relationship between Sessa’s vulnerable, self-destructive Tony and Banderas’ restrained Ciro as the film’s emotional center. Slate says Ciro’s commitment to food, hospitality and companionship gradually gives the young Bourdain a model for the values associated with his later public life. The cast also includes Dagmara Domińczyk, Rich Sommer, Emilia Jones, Stavros Halkias, Michael Jibrin and Leo Woodall.

Slate places “Tony” within Johnson’s career after indie comedies including “The Dirties,” “Operation Avalanche,” “BlackBerry” and “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie,” noting that this is his first film in a more conventional biographical mode and his first without an acting role. The review frames the project as notable because dramatizing a beloved cultural figure such as Bourdain risks either flattening or overexplaining him, but argues that this film finds a persuasive, human-scaled approach.