Tony
An early chapter in the life of the celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain presents a dour, troubled figure.
Kitchen stink: Dominic Sessa
Image courtesy of A24.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
In his autobiography, Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain described himself thus: “I was – to be frank – a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” Fair comment. In Matt Johnson’s rough-and-ready biopic, the chef – long before he had thought about frying an egg – was bent on being a writer and bedding Nancy Putkoski (played here by Emilia Jones). The film doesn’t exactly make it clear how he thinks he will achieve these aims, although he does toss around big words in order to impress Nancy and the professors at Vassar College. But Bourdain’s greatest propensity is for lying, employing falsehoods to dazzle his friends, teachers, employers and family, all of whom invest in him a degree of trust – although his mother Gladys (Dagmara Domińczyk) seems to have her doubts.
Catching sight of Nancy at a club, ‘Tony’ (Dominic Sessa, from The Holdovers) attempts, limply, to chat her up. However, she gives him short shrift, telling him that she’s leaving for Provincetown, Massachusetts, that very evening, where she will spend her summer break. What other virtues Tony may lack, he’s not short of hope, ambition and stubbornness. So it’s off to Provincetown he goes without a plan in his head or much money in his pocket. It’s a summer that will transform his future…
There is a breed of biopic in which the subject is depicted as a borderline monster, the best example being Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull on which, amazingly, Jake LaMotta served as technical advisor, aiding in his own character assassination. Scorsese also persuaded Jordan Belfort to assist on The Wolf of Wall Street, which hardly painted the corrupt stockbroker and businessman in a favourable hue. As portrayed in Tony, the young Anthony Bourdain is a dour, insufferable, dyspraxic, dishonest and unfocused loser and pathological liar, not a character one would want to spend more than ten minutes with. Utilising his practised technique of blending improvisation with docu-drama, Matt Johnson has created an edgy, fuzzy fever-dream of misplaced ambition, through which Dominic Sessa wanders with his characteristic misfit bearing, like a young and very tall Bob Dylan.
Johnson – who previously won raves for his Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie – has opted for a slow-burn build-up, in which the teenage Bourdain exhibits no interest in cuisine and routinely destroys the oysters he’s been given to shuck by Antonio Banderas’ surprisingly long-suffering ‘Chef’, a Latino cook with no name. Hints are given about the colourful characters that swim in and out of Bourdain’s eventful summer, although they remain relatively shadowy figures. Leo Woodall bucks type-casting as the dangerous and arrogant thief-cum-drug addict ‘Sal’, having piled on a few pounds and added a few tattoos, while Emilia Jones is given little to do other than to protest at Tony’s preposterousness. Which leaves Banderas as the mysterious ‘Chef’, a cultured enigma with a shadowy past and no visible person with whom to share his present life. He is the best thing in the film.
Bearing in mind the surprisingly high quality of most films about food and the cooking of it, Tony is a disappointment and the Chef’s haphazard kitchen is a warzone to be avoided. And considering how much damage Tony exacts on Banderas’ haven, it’s a wonder the latter keeps him on, even when Tony’s mind seems to be constantly elsewhere. Sadly, though, Bourdain was unavailable to lend a helping hand to this hatchet job (or pathography) of his early life, as he hanged himself in 2018, after his girlfriend – the Italian movie star Asia Argento – left him. That, too, sounds like it could be the basis for a film biography, but just as cheerless a one as this strange, meandering oddity.
Cast: Dominic Sessa, Emilia Jones, Leo Woodall, Antonio Banderas, Stavros Halkias, Dagmara Domińczyk, Rich Sommer, Monica Raymund, Michael Jibrin, Caroline Portu.
Dir Matt Johnson, Pro Tim White, Trevor White, Matt Johnson and Matthew Miller, Screenplay Matt Johnson, Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels and Lou Howe, from the memoir Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, Ph Michael Bauman, Pro Des Ryan Warren Smith, Ed Curt Lobb and Robert Upchurch, Music Jay McCarrol, Costumes Chloe Karmin, Sound Stephen Barden.
Star Thrower Entertainment/Zapruder Films-A24 Films.
106 mins. USA/Canada. 2026. UK Rel: 14 August 2026. US Rel: 21 August 2026. Cert. 15.
