“Some films are slices of life,” observed Alfred Hitchcock. “Mine are slices of cake.” It’s almost too easy to go in for the food metaphors with Matt Johnson’s “Tony,” which follows an early episode in the life of famed chef-cum-cultural ambassador Anthony Bourdain. But such a blunt, unfussy image feels like a fitting tribute to both the film and its notorious plainspoken subject.
“Tony” homes in on a single formative summer in the life of Dominic Sessa’s eponymous whippersnapper. This Vassar student in the mid-1970s possesses all the self-confidence that he’s destined to write the next great bildungsroman … and none of the self-knowledge that he will live it out instead. A denied fellowship application dashes the literary dreams of Tony Bourdain, the preferred name during his teenage years. So, with little thought, he blows up his summer plans to follow a girl (Emilia Jones’ unremarkable but somehow irresistible Nancy) to Provincetown.
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What follows from Tony’s shortsighted decision is exactly what the quote from the real Bourdain, featured on the film’s poster and in its epigraph, promises. He was badly in need of an ass-kicking, and Johnson shows him receiving just that. Yet adhering to truth in advertising does not make a simple movie.
“Tony” delivers the cinematic equivalent of the diner cake slice that tastes exactly as it looks behind the refrigerated glass. It’s nothing new, to be sure, and could perhaps stand to be a bit scrappier in the spirit of the subject or the era. But … try resisting a great bite with both frosting and filling. That power is hard to deny.
Despite the film ending with Sessa proudly claiming the name the world knows for his character, a choice so obvious it has to be tongue-in-cheek from Johnson, “Tony” amounts to something far more than a superhero-styled “Anthony Bourdain: Origins.” There are hints of the forthcoming pain and the budding persona, yes. But the script offers more than just fan service for “Parts Unknown” and “Kitchen Confidential” superfans, resisting winky Easter eggs or loaded foreshadowing. The events play out as the humbling of a young man whose destiny as one of America’s gastronomic luminaries was far from assured.
The irascible, impudent lout falls into the culinary arts not through providence but through his own pugnacity. Tony falls in with a good-natured chef (Anthony Banderas) who provides the boy shelter – remarkably not something he considered when running away from home – in exchange for washing the dishes in his modest seafood restaurant. This crash course in the mechanics and politics of the kitchen’s totem pole provides worldly instruction. Tony is doing and making things with his hands, not merely observing and opining about them on the page.
This series of rituals and rhythms, often stylistically routinized by editors Curt Lobb and Robert Upchurch, provides an instructive and demonstrative real-world education for the liberal arts student. But these scenes are not filtered through the warped perspective of memory, which can often recast past misery as mettle-proving exercises. Because Johnson’s script (co-written with Todd Bartels, Lou Howe, and Matthew Miller) remains self-contained to this fateful stretch, these cascading experiences can feel as they might have for the character: aimless, annoying, awesome.
A typical coming-of-age film tends to prioritize the product over the process of transformation. “Tony,” however, allows the audience to luxuriate in the people and places that its subject loved best. Johnson finds the most success in the loose vibes of a hangout movie with Tony and the kitchen staff rather than fixating on this crucible in the character’s life. Comedian Stavros Halkias is always great for a laugh, though the film’s true scene-stealer is Leo Woodall as Sal, a cocksure oyster shucker whose brash bravado and edgy risk-taking feel like a model for Bourdain’s later swagger.
Playing Tony ultimately does not require much greater range than the spoiled scamp Angus Tully, Sessa’s breakout role in Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers.” But even the reheats of that performance are still tasty. Sessa thrives in the moments when Johnson and cinematographer Michael Bauman let the camera dwell on his quiet contemplation of the gap between his discontent with where he is and his uncertainty about who he will become. The wistful notes of Jay McCarrol’s score further emphasize that “Tony” is as much a journey of letting something go as finding something new.
Some of that sadness also comes from the dramatic irony of knowing how Bourdain’s life would ultimately evolve and end. However, Johnson never lets that context cloud the experience of the events as they unfold. “Tony” remarkably manages to embrace and eschew the revisionist strain of “Great Man” biopics, which have attempted to work around cradle-to-grave formulas ripped from Wikipedia by homing in on an illustrative incident in the subject’s life. Knowing there’s more cake is not necessary for the slice to fulfill its mandate to be sufficient and satisfying. It’s plenty sweet as is. [B+]
“Tony” opens in theaters beginning Friday, August 7.
Marshall Shaffer is a freelance film critic and journalist based in New York. In addition to The Playlist, his byline can be found at sites including Slant Magazine, Decider, Crooked Marquee, and Men's Health. He is a member of the Critics Choice Association and New York Film Critics Online.
