Tony
Dominic Sessa and Emilia Jones in “Tony.” Photo via IMDb.com.
'Most of us don’t know when our time will be up.
Uncertainty is one of the things that keeps life interesting.
But the rules don’t apply when it comes to subjects of biopics. (Bob Dylan, as usual, being the exception.) In biopics, knowing how the story ends is why the story is being told in the first place. Instead of suspense or surprise, we get a spoiler alert.
So we know going into the theater to see “Tony,” that the film’s subject is Anthony Bourdain.
More accurately, it’s an origin story of a teen dude with attitude who would, decades later, gain international notice as a bad boy chef and bestselling author before morphing into a sardonic travel guide and hedonistic philosopher until he committed suicide.
But that’s all yet to come. “Tony” takes place in the summer of 1975 when its protagonist was a 19-year-old writing student at Vassar College. Sure, a huge ego is a prerequisite for anyone aspiring to be A Writer. But young Anthony had pretentiousness to spare. He was – in Bourdain’s own words, reprinted on the movie poster – “A Spoiled, Miserable, Narcissistic, Self-Destructive and Thoughtless Young Lout … Badly in Need of a Good Ass-Kicking.”
And those are his good points.
Moody Dominic Sessa (the kid from “The Holdovers) plays the cocky young wannabe. Set in Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod, “Tony” is the account of the ass-kicking.
It is a bildungsroman. That’s the kind of word Tony uses to impress a trio of professors handing out a prestigious Vassar writing fellowship. That long German tongue twister is better known on this side of the Atlantic as a coming-of-age story.
The professors aren’t sufficiently impressed. They give the fellowship to someone else.
Tony doesn’t bother sharing this news with his parents – his doting dad Pierre (Rich Sommer), or New York Times copy editor mom Gladys (Dagmara Dominczyk). Or maybe he’s not accepting the news himself. Rejection is not in a narcissist’s wheelhouse. But lying is. Lying is also a wonderful asset for would-be writers. With some of the best writers, it’s impossible to tell the difference.
Whatever. Brash Tony claims to have won the prize, and heads off to Provincetown for the summer.
His intentions, it turns out, are less literary than lustful. He’s following Nancy Putkoski, an older woman (she was a year ahead of him in high school.) He’s deeply smitten. It’s easy to see why.
English actress Emilia Jones is as beguiling here as she was a few years ago, leading “CODA” to all those rich emotions and well-deserved prizes including a Best Picture Oscar.
Trying to impress Nancy with the lie about his writing fellowship is a tough act to pull off, especially since Tony is actually eking out a meager living washing dishes in a local fish house. Provincetown is a pretty tiny tourist town, after all, and it seems like someone would have noticed.
Luckily, his Chef is played by Antonio Banderas, who, after “One Fight After Another,” seems to have become Hollywood’s go-to guy for enlightened zen-master Yoda roles. The film’s funniest scenes take place in the kitchen, where the staff led by Leo Woodall, Stavros Halkias and Michel Jibrin are more attuned to raunchy repartee and cocaine than fine cuisine and cleanliness.
Director Matt Johnson has his work cut out for him not falling into the predictable plot holes or cliche traps in the script he co-wrote. While the film wants to be a tribute, young Tony displays precious little to write home about.
It’s one of the pitfalls of wanting to write the story of your life before you actually get a life.
Stars Sessa and Jones create their best chemistry prior to their inevitable loss of innocence.
Their charm comes from reminding the audience what a hard job it is, pretending to be grown up. For romantics like Anthony Bourdain, limerence (look it up) trumps actual love, any day.
Provincetown plays its own romantic role in the story, captured in Patti Page’s great vocal on the soundtrack:
If you're fond of sand dunes and salty air
Quaint little villages here and there
You're sure to fall in love with old Cape Cod.
If you like the taste of lobster stew
Served by a window with an ocean view
You’re sure to fall in love with old Cape Cod …
Anthony Bourdain’s path to become the writer he aspired to be turned out to be through the restaurant kitchen. But we already knew that.
The figure that he became on the long-running CNN series would far surpass any literary fantasy he could have imagined. Hitting his stride, he proved to be engaging, energetic, endlessly curious, funny and, maybe, wise.
Which added to the shock of his death in 2018 at age 62. How could someone who had everything going for him take his own life? What was it that he had been trying to outrun?
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