The film’s most piercingly telling, damning observation is that it’s the lone woman of color in the room, struggling against an implacable enemy, who’s the only one doing the trying.
Either way, it’s good to see someone try. There may be some relief in seeing Beatriz go to bat for us, but, as the film argues, we all still may go down swinging in the end, toppling into the abyss. A caveat: Beatriz at Dinner does not aim to comfort. White’s script is a boldly downbeat descent, given poetic body by Arteta’s watchful, gentle filmmaking. Hayek’s is an earthy, aching performance-one of the best of the year-that’s complemented well by John Lithgow as the opposition, and Connie Britton and Chloë Sevigny as other witless guests. As played by Salma Hayek, zen-calm massage therapist Beatriz is a vessel of collective outrage while also maintaining her individuality, a keenly wrought sense of self. And yet, it’s also cathartically bruising to watch the film’s title character hurl her disgust at a Trumpian billionaire when they wind up, through a mundane twist of fate, at the same nightmarish dinner party. As a biting and ultimately devastating plaint about an economic system grown sociopathically rapacious with greed, it’s almost too much to bear. Director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White’s latest collaboration premiered at Sundance in the shell-shocked first days after the presidential inauguration, giving the film an eerie timeliness.
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