The Souls of Rich Folk
Seen on Amazon
Beatriz at Dinner would like to insist that it really does have a point. And surely it must, with its careful photography (capturing the essence of a dry, warm night on the Pacific coast), strong cast, and juxtaposition of a caring immigrant woman with a band of careless rich folk.
But the further we go into its hour and twenty-two minutes, the more and more this supposedly cage free, farm fresh Dinner feels like take out from Denny’s.
Sure, there are some old crowd pleasers about rich people: trophy hunting, wine, laughing at how much money they make, laughing at how they did it, laughing at whom they took it from...and finally a vapid, vaguely xenophobic line, delivered by an enabling housewife: “it’s not like we’re beheading people or blowing up babies.”
But where it’s all supposed to take us, we still haven’t the slightest idea. And the more we think about it, the more specious Beatriz at Dinner appears.
The very inciting incident – a little VW, 10 years old max, that won’t start – rings false in this age of the cheap, reliable Hyundai. Then, instead of asking for jumper cables, Beatriz (Salma Hayek – wide-eyed, gentle), a masseuse and “healer,” calls a mechanic friend who lives an hour away to come check it out. What will he do? Pop the hood and see that it’s the carburetor?
It’s all a set up of course: the filmmakers did whatever it took to get Beatriz invited to a dinner with three Californian real estate developers and their limousine liberal wives.
The behavior of her fellow dinner guests is predictably boorish. The men are little boys – the kind who steal a slug from dad’s tumbler and piss on mom’s flower bed. The women are quick to scold but in the end always yield because, sigh, boys will be boys.
Still, the actors all have a rather good time with it, particularly John Lithgrow, who enjoys himself immensely as Doug, chomping on a stogie, laughing smugly, and intimating that – wink, wink – they had to bend the rules a little on that last deal. Connie Britton also stands out as a housewife who regards herself as above silly things like class consciousness and western medicine (we waited for, but never got, a speech about refusing to vaccinate children).
At first, the excessive use of archetypes had us intrigued, reminiscent as it was of the beginning of a slasher movie. Where was Beatriz leading us, we wondered? Blood, we hoped.
But no, only discomfort as we sense an argument brewing between Beatriz and Doug. When it does finally arrive, over the killing of animals, there is a moment when the filmmakers almost raise an interesting point. Beatriz, we are told, is an empath – she feels the pain of every suffering person and animal. But what great moral precedence does her sensitivity to pain give her over Doug, himself immune to the suffering of others, save for when it brings him pleasure? Alas, right at the last minute the movie shies away.
But if the movie doesn’t want to go there...where, then, does it want to go?
Writer Mike White, whose credits include The Emoji Movie, School of Rock, and Pitch Perfect 3, doesn’t seem quite sure. His intentions are no doubt pure. But, perhaps due to a slight unfamiliarity with the social commentary drama, he has trouble bringing the whole to a meaningful finish.
Back in our Brooklyn days, the locals (Polish, Ukrainian, Puerto Rican), began trying to get a piece of the hipster pie by opening shops with names like “Urban Koffee” or “Magik Juices.” But for all their adoption of the right surface aesthetic – Italian espresso machines, wood treated so as to look reclaimed – they never could get the right tone. And no one was fooled
Beatriz at Dinner feels similarly out of its depth – a good looking, well directed, and snappily written movie, but one that ultimately cannot fool the refined palate.