I was a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.
So begins Tony, the origin story of celebrity chef/traveler/raconteur Anthony Bourdain – with Bourdain’s self-description of himself at age 19. Tony is more of a coming of age film than a biopic, focusing on this pivotal, transformative year in Bourdain’s life.
The young Anthony Bourdain (Dominic Sesso), lazy, entitled and supremely confident, is betting everything on being awarded a college writing fellowship that he can use to bankroll a fun year in NYC. Having no Plan B, he is devastated when he doesn’t win the fellowship. Even worse, he has already told everyone he knows that he had already won the prize, and, unable to face the embarrassment, covers it up by running away. Impulsively, he heads to the tip of Cape Cod in pursuit of a a girl who is summering there. Arriving at the onset of Provincetown’s tourist season, he soon finds himself with no girl, no money, no place to stay and no ticket for the return ferry.
The taciturn chef-owner (Antonio Banderas) of a modest restaurant allows him to sleep in a hammock on his back porch and to eat at the restaurant in return for working as the dishwasher. Bourdain becomes the lowest-ranking member of the kitchen team, a colorful assembly of experienced cooks. He thinks that he is too good for this setting, but his colleagues are uniformly unimpressed with him.
Young Bourdain, holding on to the writing fellowship as a false cover story, still tells everyone that he is a writer. Of course, he hasn’t written anything – not even a draft or an outline – or even concocted an original idea. He is, however, an earnest and often successful bullshitter – and he’s about to learn how far that will take him. He’s not a sociopathic liar, on the road to being a con man; he lies out of desperation, terrified that somebody will learn that at age 19, he hasn’t magically already become who he aspires to be. What he needs is a harsh reality check – and that’s what he gets from the restaurant kitchen – where pampering is not tolerated.
Of course, there is humor in watching a young punk getting his comeuppances, and much of Tony is very funny. Dominic Sesso (The Holdovers) is able to keep the audience rooting for the young Anthony Bourdain even while he is behaving badly. Banderas is solid as his boss and purveyor of tough love. Leo Woodall (Tuner, Nuremburg, The White Lotus) is excellent as kitchen crewmate Sal, a blue collar hedonist who has much more game than the teen Tony.
Note: Bourdain’s real life best friend, fellow celebrity chef Eric Ripert, appears in a cameo as the chair of the admissions committee for the Culinary Institute of America.
I remembered reading about Bourdain’s Provincetown experience in his own colorful memoir Kitchen Confidential, which launched his post-restaurateur career as a travel and food writer and television personality. The Bourdain biodoc Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain was one of the best films of 2021, and also covers this period as it traces his entire life.
The director Matt Johnson and co-writers Todd Bartel and Lou Howe made wonderful choices in adapting the source material; instead of making a movie about Bourdain discovering a love of cooking, they focus on the character-building payoff of his Provincetown experience. Johnson also gets the tone just right, with just the right amount of humor, as he did in the corporate docudramedy BlackBerry in 2023.
Tony’s trailer (below) depicts a talented, immature narcissist who keeps self-sabotaging until he falls under the guidance of a crusty mentor. Because that’s the plot of 1969’s fictional Downhill Racer, with Robert Redford and Gene Hackman, I was going to skip Tony. But then I read Jeannette Catsoulis’ glowing review in the NYT, and I’m glad that The Wife and I got to see it. It’s a good watch.