Review of Beatriz at Dinner (2017) by Aj C — 25 Jun 2017

Beatriz at Dinner offers single combat in a gilded cage between 1%er.

Doug Strutt (John Lithgow) and 99%er: Beatriz (Salma Hayek). Beware!

The dice, like Beatriz, are loaded, the setup formulaic, the game, as.

Bernie Sanders would say, is rigged. Beatriz, a Mexican healer in L.A., is steeped in every holistic therapy, hot-stone massage and ancient healing technique you can think of, and more. Her car breaks down at the remote home of rich client Cathy, who invites--insists-- that she stay for a dinner with her husband and their 1%er guests, never mind that B. is clad in faded jeans and a T-shirt, never mind that it's a formal affair for plutocrats; never mind that B. couldn't possibly fit in and should never have been asked. Guest-of-honor Strutt (gee, could the name be a heads-up?), is a developer notorious for playing hardball with unions and politicos, and usually winning. B., drinking steadily, responds by informing Strutt, and everyone else, of her moral superiority: she's spiritually advanced; she's stressed from helping so many patients; her village was destroyed in some long-ago development boondoggle; her family was dispersed; she knows the planet is dying; and a neighbor killed her goat. In short, filled with resentment and alcohol. Also spite: to a guest who had kidney stones she recommends 'remedies' that would have made him sicker--the kind of thinking that leads to James T. Hodgkinson. Strutt, for his part, is rich and insensitive, and he shot a rhinoceros. This movie is not a tirade but a slow-motion inanimated feature, a lecture rich in the virtue-signaling Hollywood loves so well. Suffice to say you'll have time to speculate on why the.

Wonderfully odd Chloë Sevigny is wasted in her dinky little role. There are two endings. The first, a dream-vs.-reality job, is a cheat plain and simple. The second develops so slowly you know what's coming, so can leave early and beat the traffic.