The movies need more people like Beatriz. But, we also need the film that surrounds her to succeed. In “Beatriz at Dinner”, the will of title character (Salma Hayek) is dampened and ultimately undone by the powers that be. The powers here are embodied by a billionaire dinner guest, played with smarmy nastiness by John Lithgow. Lithgow’s Doug Strutt would no doubt work hand-in-glove with the current administration, and Lithgow’s immense skill saves the role from collapsing into an ooze of pure evil. He’s a chilling gale blowing in the face of the Beatriz’s heated but pent-up activism. The film is told from her perspective and she gets her shots in, but it feels like the filmmakers, writer Mike White and director Miguel Arteta, are too cautious and protective of their tidy, indie house of cards to let things get too messy. It’s like they’ve given Beatriz an invitation to her own movie without truly making her feel welcome, much like her onscreen hosts.
The death of Beatriz’s beloved goat, a metaphor that starts off heavy and grows into a wrecking ball of symbolism, kicks off the core conflicts, Man vs. Nature and Man vs. Man. Beatriz is a healer who drives to Newport Beach from Altadena during rush hour to visit her wealthy clients Cathy and Grant (Connie Britton and David Warshofsky). For those who live in Los Angeles, this alone is grounds for sainthood. Beatriz has already earned that title, though, for having tended to Cathy and Grant’s sick teenage daughter when she was going through treatment for Lymphoma.
Beatriz’s car breaks down in the driveway and she is (conveniently) asked to stay for dinner. The set-up is rife with cultural contrasts, and the film has fun with them from time to time - like how her hosts call her “Beatrice” making zero attempt at a Spanish pronunciation or later how the dinner guests mistake her for the staff.
Still, in the first scene with Cathy, the film starts to wrestle with its contradictions. Cathy treats her like a friend taking no issue when Beatriz interrupts her massage to tell her about the aforementioned goat. We’re not used to the approachable and forgiving white host in these types of movies, and Britton is a master of empathetic gear-shifting. But, not helped by the swelling soundtrack and tight close up on Beatriz, it feels like she is rambling in a vacuum. Perhaps this is the point, that Beatriz is operating in total isolation, but she comes off as sad and kooky where her pleas should feel more desperate and impassioned. This is no fault of Hayek’s who is always sturdy and sometimes excellent.
When the guests start to arrive and mingle, the film achieves a giddy foreboding, especially as Beatriz wanders from one awkward conversation to another. No one really understands why she’s there, and her hosts seem to be over-explaining her presence and are almost threatened by it. These caricatures of white guilt and greed feel too simplistic and easily drawn. Amy Landecker as Strutt’s (3rd?) wife fares better that Chloe Sevigny and Jay Duplass’ nouveau riche cutouts, but she is still given Melania-levels of nuance.
Despite being host to a party of seven, the film exerts little effort at becoming an ensemble piece and soars only when Doug and Beatriz start sparring. The mystery of whether she actually knows Strutt, a destructive real estate developer who may or may not have razed her village in Mexico to build a resort, gives way to a much deeper, more universal conflict. Strutt represents the cruelty to nature and mankind that she so abhors (yep, the same one that killed her goat), and the best moments are the ones in which their horns are locked. I found myself wishing that the lights would dim and a spotlight would land on Lithgow and Hayek, washing out the nuisance of the supporting characters who struggle to stay relevant amid the central tete-a-tete.
Unfortunately, neither actor can rescue the film from losing its way towards the end. We’re treated to two endings (one real and one imagined) rendering the filmmakers indecisive and submerging the story in cliche. In the pantheon of recent films about race and class struggle, “Beatriz at Dinner” rests comfortably above condescending dreck like “The Help”, but it falls way short of films like “Aquarius” and “Get Out.” It lacks the originality and transcendent outbursts of humor that made those films such genre-busting delights. “Beatriz” fails to surprise in an era when both cinema and society need to do more than just illustrate injustice. We need the unsung to be given fair and colorful representation. In the end, it feels like Beatriz’s would-be advocates, both her fictional hosts and real-life creators, don’t have her back.