MATTHEW BOND After Succession, a dark and tasty treat
The Menu
Cert: 15, 1hr 46mins ★★★★★ Confess, Fletch
Cert: 15, 1hr 38mins ★★★★★ Aftersun
Cert: 12A, 1hr 42mins ★★★★★ Armageddon Time
Cert: 15, 1hr 54mins ★★★★★
By his own admission, Mark Mylod has made some pretty bad films in the past, including the wretched Ali G Indahouse two decades ago. But over the same years he has been responsible for some extraordinary television, most recently directing 13 episodes of the brilliant media drama Succession.
Now his ability to draw exceptional performances from already fine actors is transferring to the big screen. Indeed, it’s the quality of the performances that make his new film, The Menu, a particularly dark satire of greed and gastronomy, an almost edible delight.
It begins as we watch 12 people boarding a luxury motor yacht that will deliver them to a celebrated island restaurant where the beef has been aged for 152 days, dinner costs $1,250 a head, and where the quietly intimidating Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) invites his starstruck diners ‘not to eat… but taste, savour, relish…’
It’s a speech that moves one of his guests, Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), almost to tears. But while Tyler takes his food almost religiously, his spirited girlfriend Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) is far from convinced. And Chef Slowik has noticed her defiant scepticism. The mood darkens… And it gets much, much darker, course by immaculately prepared course, although to say more would be to spoil the twists, turns and menu choices that lie ahead.
The island setting and story structure bring Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians to mind, while the dark side of fine dining not only echoes recent films such as Peter Strickland’s Flux Gourmet and Philip Barantini’s Boiling Point but past classics such as Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and the gastro-grandaddy of all, Marco Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe.
And once we discover that one of the diners is a celebrated restaurant critic, played with some relish by Janet McTeer… well, all I’m saying is think Vincent Price. So not exactly original but extremely well done.
On paper, Confess, Fletch sounds like an art-world comedy thriller more in the style of the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair than the darker tones of The Burnt Orange Heresy, which it also resembles. And with Jon Hamm tackling the central role in the same, ever so handsome way that Pierce Brosnan and Claes Bang did before him, the omens look good.
And yet on the big screen… oh dear. From the moment Irwin M. Fletcher, or Fletch for short, reacts unnaturally calmly to finding an unknown murdered woman in his rented LA house, you fear for the comic tone. And that unsettling feeling remains, with the film repeatedly failing to hit its comic stride, despite one or two funny lines and decent cameos from Lucy Punch and John Slattery. Elsewhere, the casting is distinctly more miss than hit.
Aftersun has picked up no fewer than 16 nominations for the British Independent Film Awards and already won a coveted prize for writer-director Charlotte Wells at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. But despite these arthouse accolades, I fear for its commercial prospects.
It’s one of those films that invite us to fill the many deliberate gaps in its sparse and melancholy narrative, as we watch a father and 11-year-old daughter travel to Turkey for a summer holiday.
But why is Sophie’s dad, played by Normal People star Paul Mescal, so distracted and depressed?
At times it’s stunning to look at, at others difficult to follow, but newcomer Frankie Corio is wonderfully good as Sophie, a girl wise beyond her years.
Another young actor – Banks Repeta – is every bit her match as Paul Graff, the 11-yearold boy at the heart of James Gray’s quietly star-studded and deeply personal-feeling film Armageddon Time. It’s set in the New York of 1980, and I spent the first half being maddened by the challenging and uncontrollable Paul and the second half moved, almost to tears, as I slowly understood the forces shaping him. It stays with you too.