Heat of the moment
BOILING POINT I A chef unravels in Philip Barantini’s stunning one-take movie…
In 2019, when director Philip Barantini directed his 22-minute one-shot short, Boiling Point, with Stephen Graham playing a chef hitting rock bottom, he had no idea it would form the basis for a movie. “Then I sat up in bed one night, when I was shooting Villain, my first feature. And was just like, ‘What if we were to do it all in one take, the whole thing?’ Not just follow Stephen but see all these little pockets of people’s lives and introduce other characters – a slice of life, basically.”
Admittedly, you might find spending 80-minutes real-time in the company of Andy (Graham), head chef at hip eatery Jones & Sons, exhausting. When he arrives, the health and safety inspector is picking holes in the hygiene and the food order is a mess. On top of that, Andy’s ex-boss turned top TV chef (Jason Flemyng) is coming in for a meal – a bucket-load of stress that leads Andy to continue down the rabbit hole of secretly abusing his body with drink and drugs.
“I worked in restaurants,” says Barantini. “I’ve got no shame in saying I’m six years sober now. And I did go down a really dark path when I was working in kitchens. The character that Stephen plays is loosely based on me and also people that I’ve worked with. A guy I witnessed… he collapsed in the middle of a service once and he had a stroke. He was in his thirties, doing lots of cocaine, drinking and working himself into the ground. Everything that’s in the movie is something I’ve witnessed, or experienced, personally.”
Filmed in Dalston (at the real restaurant, Jones & Sons), Barantini thoroughly rehearsed his cast, bringing in real chefs to train them authentically. The plan was to shoot an entire unbroken take twice per night for four nights on the trot, giving the cast and crew eight shots at getting it right. But after a first evening of two satisfactory takes, the spread of Covid-19 meant the production had to shut down at the end of the second night. “Because everybody knew that the energy was so, so high.”
All the actors knew to style out any mistakes – fluffed lines, on-set stumbles – to make sure the cameras didn’t stop rolling. “These actors were just on it,” says the director, “and it was very nerve-wracking for them.” Despite some technical flaws (like a clock showing the wrong time) fixed later in post, it was the third take that ticked the right boxes, with performances good enough to fool viewers. “Somebody said to me, ‘So were they real chefs, the guys who were with Stephen?’” grins Barantini. “I’m like, ‘No, but that’s the best compliment I could ever get.’” JM
ETA | 19 NOVEMBER / BOILING POINT COMES OUT IN TWO MONTHS.