In his memoir Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Anthony Bourdain writes, “Good food very often, even most often, is simple food.”

From what we know of what followed in that celebrity chef and writer’s life, and all that has been spilling out lately from the closets of famous restaurants plus successful TV shows (The Bear), kitchens are anything but simple.

Canadian filmmaker Matt Johnson, who has also co-written Tony, takes Bourdain’s advice – telling simply the story of a not-too-complex young man figuring out his way in the world. And who, but for one black eye and bucketfuls of water poured down on him to wake him up every morning, doesn’t have it all that bad.

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It all goes down like comfort food, a story that could belong to other misbegotten youth who have found the right mentors at the right time. Tony is maybe not haute cuisine, but it’s a dish served with warmth.

Inspired by the initial chapters of Anthony Bourdain’s above-mentioned memoirs, Tony is set in the summer of 1975, when a lanky, awkward, college-going Bourdain (Dominic Sessa) has his heart set on earning a writing fellowship and winning over Nancy (Emilia Jones). With both out of reach, he steals some money from home and heads out to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where Nancy is spending that summer.

Money runs out soon, and so he lands up in the hammock of a kindly restaurant owner known only as Chef (Antonio Banderas). The latter allows Tony to crash out on his porch – well, it’s a seaside home, with ocean breeze and star-filled skies – in return for working in his kitchen.

Even as Tony reluctantly takes up his assigned task of dishwashing and – with experience, let’s just say he is lucky that he lasts given his pace – one can see him absorbing it all in. The cruel pace of the kitchen, the abuses and minor intoxicants freely passed around, the tiny details and the mighty egos, though Chef is above it all in true grand-and-gentlemanly Banderas way.

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Leo Woodall plays Sal, the charismatic co-worker who has everything going for him, a relatively easy slot in the kitchen, good looks, lots of girls, easy morals and a drug habit. Known for his romantic roles, Woodall plays the rake well, and while he is around, you worry about what slippery road he will take next, and take Tony down with him.

The narrative drama driving the film is Tony’s journey towards realising that the kitchen is the place he wants to be, and stops telling himself and the world that he is a born writer. That he would eventually be both, is too far away into the future.

Thin, tall, slightly hunched, his eyes watchful and cautious under long, curly hair, Sessa is almost like one of the white eels Chef may turn into a dish soon – particularly when sprawled in his briefs in the hammock, his limbs dangling. Sessa is good, up to the point when the film wants him to convey the confusion and callowness of youth. However, his performance doesn’t transcend that, nor does he allow himself to descend into the brash self-confidence that marked Bourdain by his own confession, even at that early stage of his life.

It’s Banderas who simply lifts the film, apart from cinematographer Michael Baufman (fresh off the accolades of One Battle After Another). Provincetown was the ultimate ’70s town, with nothing provincial about it, welcoming all kinds of writers, painters, artists to its white sandy beaches. Baufman captures the hustle and bustle of Provincetown well, as well as those quiet life-defining beach moments between Chef and Tony.

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The breeze off the sea, the light off the bonfire, the thrill of freshly snared fish, all dance across Banderas’s expressive and kind face.

If there was anything Bourdain wrote more about than food, it was travel. Chef’s is a face well-travelled.

Tony movie director: Matt Johnson


Tony movie cast: Dominic Sessa, Antonio Banderas, Emilia Jones, Leo Woodall, Stavros Halkias, Michael Jibrin


Tony movie rating: 3.5 stars