Beatriz at Dinner (8/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 83 minutes.

Not for children.

Kathy (Connie Britton) and Grant (David Warshofsky) throw a big party at their beautiful mansion to celebrate a big deal they closed with the help of Doug (John Lithgow), a hugely successful real estate entrepreneur. Beatriz (Salma Hayek), a holistic healer massage therapist who helped cure their daughter of cancer is at the house and her car has broken down so she’s invited to the party.

While the plot is a collision of values between Beatriz and Doug, what sets this film apart is the party dialogue of the exceptional script (Mike White) translated to the screen with unusually good pacing by director Miguel Arteta.  Most movies that try to display slice of life dialogue fail dismally because it is so stilted and phony. But the dialogue in this film is so good, so true to the characters’ respective characters, that it expertly captures the quality of such a group.

There are scintillating performances by the supporting cast that includes Chloë Sevigny, Amy Landecker as Doug’s wife, Jeana, and Jay Duplass. These people just don’t seem to be acting as they sit around and discuss things that real people of privilege would actually discuss at a party like this. Maybe I’m emphasizing the dialogue too much, but I’ve seen too many films in which the conversation is just so false and contrived that when I finally see a film in which it rings true, I am unusually impressed.

Lithgow is particularly effective, especially when he gushes on about how great it makes him feel to kill big game (something I think should be a felony, and Beatriz obviously agrees with me).

Beatriz is inscrutable, to say the least, and the ending is equally so, if not beyond credibility.  The runtime is right up my alley.