"The menu", black comedy of uses and customs
In this movie, it's not so much the food that's important as the emcee's secret plan.
THE MENU 6 points
( The Menu ; United States, 2022)
Directed by: Mark Mylod.
Screenplay: Seth Reiss and Will Tracy.
Duration: 106 minutes.
Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Fiennes, Nicholas Hoult, Arturo Castro, John Leguizamo, Hong Chau.
Premiere exclusively in theaters.
Coincidence, trend or fashion, in recent months audiovisual production (film + series) has enjoyed a small explosion of the “kitchen stories” subgenre, stories that take place to a large extent between pots, pans and ovens, standing out without much effort The Bear , a portrait of a small restaurant on the way to Chicago, and The Chef , about the tribulations of a high-level chef in an exclusive restaurant in London. The menu is something else, far removed from the realistic register of the series created by Christopher Storer and the Philip Barantini film, although here too the boiling points and cooking times have a central presence in the plot. In the film by Mark Mylod, an experienced series producer (he directed more than a dozen episodes of Succession and several of the Game of Thrones saga ), a group of twelve diners set out to spend an evening at the exclusive venue of chef Slowik (mysterious, eventually sinister Ralph Fiennes ). To get to the site and enjoy the culinary experience, it is necessary to travel by boat to an isolated spot; that insularity goes hand in hand with eccentricity when it comes to receiving guests, which will only go in crescendo.
It is clear that the point of view of everything that can be seen, heard and tasted will fall on Margot ( Anya Taylor-Joy ), about whom little or nothing is known at the beginning, beyond the fact that she is the companion of a young foodie with airs . The rest of the contingent is part of the universe of the rich and famous: businessmen, actors, a culinary critic, millionaires of race. After the introductions, the table begins to be served, and the first of the dishes on the menu by steps is presented by its creator in a solemn tone and under the strict cloak of silence from the rest of the employees and customers. The menuIt is one of those films about which it is not convenient to say too much, but it is necessary to warn that, very quickly, the strangeness of certain signs ends up taking control of the plot. The important thing is not so much the food – which includes a tasting of seaweed and other vegetables on a sea stone base and a selection of dips without bread for dipping – as the secret plan of the master of ceremonies.
The main problem with the script written by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy lies in the difficulty of sustaining the suspense once the truth of the Milanese begins to be as clear as the large windows of the reception room. Hitchock took the idea of a small group of people locked in one place to a maximum degree of purification in Drifting Eight . The menu, a black comedy of manners and customs, is part of that lineage, although at a certain moment the tension gives way to a recurring cliché: the powerful always keep their little clothes hidden from the sun, which are usually put out in the open in extreme situations. Despite the commonplace, Mylod manages to include the occasional surprise sandwich (the dishes are increasingly sophisticated, although not in the expected sense, reaching unexpected levels of abstraction) and the most Argentinean British-American in the world, Anya Taylor- Joy once again shows that she is capable of putting any character that is placed on her shoulders.
