Beatriz at Dinner

Beatriz at Dinner is a 2017 drama film directed by Miguel Arteta from a screenplay by Mike White. The film stars Salma Hayek, John Lithgow, Connie Britton, Jay Duplass, Amy Landecker, Chloë Sevigny, and David Warshofsky.

Beatriz at Dinner had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2017, and was released in the United States on June 9, 2017, by Roadside Attractions and FilmNation Entertainment, and in Canada on June 16, 2017, by Elevation Pictures.

Plot

The film opens with a woman rowing a boat in a mangrove swamp where she encounters a white goat on the shore. Next, Beatriz Blanco, a masseuse, is shown waking up at her Altadena home amongst her various animals. She heads off to a cancer treatment center in Santa Monica where she helps patients with alternative medicine.

After work, Beatriz drives to the Newport Beach home of affluent client Kathy to give her a massage before her dinner party. When Beatriz’s car won’t start after the massage, Kathy invites Beatriz to stay for the dinner party, to the chagrin of her husband Grant who thinks it’s a bad idea because they are entertaining important business connections.

The first guests to arrive are married couple Shannon and Alex, who are about to make a small fortune off of a business venture. Next to arrive is Doug Strutt, the guest of honor and a real estate tycoon, with his wife Jeana. Kathy introduces Beatriz to her friends and explains how they met: Beatriz treated Tara, Kathy and Grant's daughter who is currently away at college. Kathy claims Beatriz’s alternative therapies helped Tara beat cancer. When Beatriz learns that a friend won't be able to come help with her car until the morning, Kathy insists that she stay the night.

Interactions between Doug and Beatriz get off to a bad start with Doug mistaking her for one of the house staff members. Beatriz tells Doug he looks familiar to her, and he tells her that because of his various businesses, it is possible she saw him in the news. Beatriz discusses how a hotel built in her home state of Guerrero promised jobs and opportunities for her community but ended up destroying it; her family lost their home, and the police killed protesters. Doug admits to having hotels in Mexico, but insists his hotel is not the same one Beatriz describes. 

Trying to diffuse the escalating tension, Kathy invites everyone into the living room for dessert. Jeana reveals she and Doug will be going to South Africa, but she is expecting to be bored since Doug will be out hunting all day. Doug brags about his hunting of animals and passes around his phone that has a photo of a dead rhinoceros he hunted. When the phone reaches Beatriz, she calls the act "disgusting" and hurls the mobile at Doug. She exits the room as Doug laughs it off, saying not everyone can handle the graphic image.

Beatriz apologizes to Kathy and promises to make it up to her, with Kathy recommending she go to bed early. Beatriz goes to Tara's room, where she Googles Doug on the computer. The search results reveal that Doug's businesses have been involved in various controversies and legal problems. Beatriz then decides to rejoin the guests on the patio and brings a guitar with her. She sings a song titled "Las simples cosas," telling the guests it is about "how we always want to go back to the places where we loved life, but the old, simple things are now gone." 

After the song, she and Doug again trade words, with Doug insisting on the idea of manifest destiny, and Beatriz arguing that instead of hunting and killing, he should try healing. When the argument escalates and Beatriz calls out the privilege of the guests, an upset Grant tells her she needs to leave immediately and he will call a tow truck for her. Kathy tries to give Beatriz money, but she rejects it.

Doug follows Beatriz outside the house and tells her she should lighten up and not take things so seriously. Beatriz reiterates her certainty that she knows him from somewhere. When the truck arrives, Beatriz gets in, but she leaves to retrieve something from the house. Beatriz goes to Grant’s office and picks up a letter opener, then charges at Doug who is talking on the phone in the foyer.  She stabs him in the throat, and the other guests run to him, horrified. However, the sequence is revealed to be a fantasy, as Beatriz simply drops the letter opener and gets back in the truck. As the truck drives alongside the ocean, Beatriz demands they pull over. She walks to the beach, gradually walking into the water and submerging herself. She reawakens in her boat on the mangrove swamp of the film's opening.

Cast

Production

Development 
Mike White was inspired to write the script after the 2015 killing of Cecil the Lion. Said White, "I'm an animal person. I'd heard about that story, and it just hit me in the gut. I had thought to myself: If I was at a dinner party with a guy like that, and he told me he was going to Africa and hunt a lion, what would I do? Would I flip out on him? Grab a butter knife and leap across the table?" The character of Beatriz was written specifically for Salma Hayek, who was a fan of White’s show Enlightened.

Casting 
In August 2016, it was announced Connie Britton, John Lithgow, Chloë Sevigny, Jay Duplass, and Nina Arianda would be joining the film’s cast, and that Miguel Arteta, a frequent collaborator of White’s, would direct. It was also announced Christine Vachon would produce under her Killer Films banner, as would Aaron L. Gilbert under his Bron Studios banner. David Hinjosa and Pamela Koffler also served as producers on the film, alongside Jason Cloth, Richard McConnell, Brad Feinstein, and Lewis Hendler, who served as executive producers. It was later revealed Amy Landecker had joined the cast of the film, replacing Arianda.

Filming
Principal photography began on August 15, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. Production concluded on September 3, 2016. Mark Mothersbaugh composed the film's score.

Release
The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2017. Shortly after, Roadside Attractions, FilmNation Entertainment and Elevation Pictures acquired U.S. and Canadian distribution rights to the film, respectively. It was given a limited release on June 9, 2017 in the US, with a wider expansion beginning June 23. In Canada, the film was released on June 16, 2017.

Critical response
The film holds a 75% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 132 reviews with an average score of 6.50/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Beatriz at Dinner offers timely social commentary enlivened by powerful, layered performances from Salma Hayek and John Lithgow." On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 68 out of 100, based on 36 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Owen Gleiberman of Variety gave the film a positive review, calling the film a "small-scale but elegantly deft squirmfest that features a luminous performance by Salma Hayek." Eric Kohn of Indiewire.com also gave the film a positive review, writing: "White's script is well crafted as a grim chamber piece, but it falls short of developing its central tension beyond its initial implications."

Leslie Felperin of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a negative review, saying the film is a "flawed work, too broad and scattershot to skewer its deserving targets with the precision necessary for the task."

Political commentary 
The script was written in the summer of 2015 when Donald Trump was still considering running for the United States presidency. At the time, White thought the possibility of Trump being elected to office was unlikely, and so did not necessarily envision the film as a strong allegory to Trump. After Trump was elected president in November 2016, the film took on a new significance as a critique of Trump’s rhetoric and policies about immigration and Mexican immigrants, in particular. After the film premiered at Sundance in January 2017, it became seen as “the first great film of the Trump era." Multiple critics pointed to the character of Doug as a counterpart to Trump, as both are real estate magnates and display hostility towards immigrants from Mexico. The filmmakers acknowledged the similarities but maintained the character is not a direct reference to Trump.

Accolades

References

External links
 
 
 

2017 films
2017 comedy-drama films
2017 independent films
American comedy-drama films
American independent films
American satirical films
Canadian comedy-drama films
Canadian independent films
English-language Canadian films
Films directed by Miguel Arteta
Films produced by Christine Vachon
Films scored by Mark Mothersbaugh
Films with screenplays by Mike White (filmmaker)
Killer Films films
Bron Studios films
Films about parties
Films about race and ethnicity
Films about social class
Films about social issues
Films about the upper class
2010s English-language films
2010s American films
2010s Canadian films
2010s satirical films