Never eat fish on a Monday if it’s dowsed in a spicy sauce. Chef Anthony Bourdain is famous for his best-seller “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly,” in which he guts the sharp practices of high-end fish restaurants. “Tony”(A24), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, portrays him as a college-age drifter; the hazy summer it sketches has been “fictionalised or invented for the purposes of dramatisation.”
Tony, played by Dominic Sessa, is waiting to hear about a book proposal. “What’s it’s about?” his mum asks. “It’s more of, like, an idea about an idea for now,” Tony says. “It’s a ‘buildings Roman’; it means coming of age.” “It’s one word,” says his mum. “Yeah, I know.” “I just hope you didn’t put that on your application.” The phone rings. “The committee?” his mum asks. Tony nods. “Unfortunately we’ve decided to go with another student.” “O.K., great!” “I’m saying you’re not receiving the fellowship.” “Thank you very much,” Tony says, replacing the phone. “I got the fellowship,” he says.
There’s an unavailable woman whose narrative purpose is as a love interest for the male lead. Tony stalks Nancy, played by Emilia Jones, to upper-class Cape Cod. “Jaws” is playing: nineteen seventy-five. Tony spies Nancy with the new boyfriend. Pie-eyed at a bar, he orders oysters. “I ate these in France when I was a kid,” he tells the bartender, “right out of the ocean.” “So,” he goes on, “do you wanna have a drink with me?” “I’m sorry,” the bartender says, “I can’t, no.” He grabs her wrist. “I’m a writer and I have money.” (He isn’t and he doesn’t.) The restaurant owner is summoned. “It’s time to go home,” Chef says. A nice shot after Tony is ejected shows his head pillowed on the edge of the curb with the rest of his body akimbo on the street. He emerges from blackout in a hammock outside Chef’s cottage having been relieved of his wallet. While he waits for the ferry back to the mainland, Nancy greets him and invites him to a party. He doubles back, pretending he has just arrived from Boston. This kind of one-two deception is his flagship trick. “I’m so sorry about yesterday,” he says to Chef, “could I stay on that hammock for a few more days?” He could wash pots. “You work in a kitchen before? Do you have the safety training, the fire, everything?” “Yeah.”
Tony plods through the dishes. “I’d be quick about it if I were you,” restaurant-oyster-shucker Sal says. “You know,” Tony says, “I can cook too! My dad is, like, one of the best chefs in New Jersey.” “He says he can cook, chef!” Sal says.
Sal, played by Leo Woodall, begs to come to Nancy’s party. Tony agrees but “if anybody asks, I’m on a writing fellowship.” At the party Sal is focused; he follows women with his eyes. “Do you girls wanna know how to shuck an oyster?” he asks. “You gotta be careful with them. They’re a real aphrodisiac.” He claims to be Tony’s writing mentor. “You’re a professor?” one of the women asks. “Grad student, Harvard,” Sal says, and then takes the woman upstairs.
Tony’s story falls apart. Nancy knows the kitchen staff. She “watched you and a bunch of fishermen have a bonfire.” Tony fabulates. “If I tell you the truth, you have to promise to not tell anyone else. O.K.? I’m writing a book about a chef. I took a job here so I can write about the guy who owns the place.” “So do you, like, cook things?” Nancy asks. “Yeah, all sorts of fancy stuff. Come to dinner Friday and order the special. If anybody asks, I’m not a writer, I work in a kitchen.”
Sal is a conventional Hollywood Bad Boy. His language is blue and his slurs are anti-gay and anti-women and he sleeps, smokes, drinks, and drugs his way through his scenes. He beats up Nancy’s boyfriend as a favour to Tony. (The four writers could, of course, talk about “banter” and being “realistic,” but this talk would be unconvincing and doesn’t excuse the bigotry.)
Tony gets off on it all. He is manipulative: an insincere apology follows. “I don’t care, Tony,” Nancy says, “just grow the f*** up.” Tony is a Flawed Male Genius. “I take a walk along the beach by myself to collect my thoughts,” he says, “then I sit down with the typewriter.” This isn’t true—as Chef says, “I’ve never seen you write anything.” He is a fantasist. He is neither a chef nor a writer. Not yet. Chef, played by Antonio Banderas, takes an interest in Tony, demonstrating, say, how to distill salt from sea water; Tony doesn’t know whether Chef is “Spanish or Mexican.”
Three scenes illustrate the film’s skilled pacing and rhythm. Chef is Catholic: “As long as you live here you’re going to church,” he says. Tony contemplates the Blessed Virgin after Latin mass. Next, he and Sal hook up with a fisherman. “You holding?” Sal asks. He needs drugs to deal to the kitchen staff. “You got any money?” Mr Serra and Mr Woodall’s best scene together follows. Tony is transfixed by Sal as he tightens his belt round his own biceps, injects heroin, and moans “ahhhh.” Then Tony calls his parents from a pay phone down an alley. We hear both sides of the conversation. But the camera is several metres away, a throng of summer tourists between Tony and the audience. Tony is isolated from us.
“What if I admit I’m here for completely selfish reasons?” Tony asks Nancy. “I need a photo for the back of my book.” “Of what?” Nancy asks. “Of me.” “I want you to take my photo because I like the way I feel when you look at me.” “So what’s the book about?” Nancy asks. “How about this?” Tony says. “When it’s done you can be the first to read it.”
Adam Poole
23rd August 2026
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