EARLY BEGINNINGS

CELEBRATED FOOD CRITQUE GIVEN A BEGINNING AGAIN

by PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Director Matt Johnson uses intimate camera angles and poignant moments to mirror the detail oriented investigations that the biopic protagonist undertook in various cities and kitchens around the world.

The early adult life of celebrated chef and food/travel writer Anthony Bourdain would be ever so typical of a 19-year-old, in Tony (2026), were it not for that summer becoming a formidable baseline for that blunt and at times cutting critiques of society and human nature that attracted a very loyal following 30 years later.

Dominic Sessa plays Anthony as a big liar of such extraordinary ability that he is almost unflinchingly fooling everybody around him about his fortunes during the summer of 1975.

“Tony” still manages to get everything wrong even after covering his reality up with a lie. The protagonist tells everyone he has received a scholarship to write a novel. And then he tells everyone he has extensive experience in a commercial kitchen.

Tony even lies to the reason he has for leaving home when he coincidentally bumps into a love interest at the ferry dock.

The truth be told, the main motivation for those lazy days of summer between college terms becomes an old high school flame, Nancy, played by Emilia Jones, after seeing her again in a New Jersey pub. The encounter in the pub is significant enough to find out where Tony’s story will begin.

To skip the storyline ahead a bit, Tony ends up working in the kitchen of a seafood restaurant in Provincetown, Massachusetts. As a God loving person, Chef Jose Vatel has a high tolerance level for delinquency, and gives Tony a job and a place to stay on his front porch, with a hammock, beach and ocean views.

Johnson uses the personalities found in the kitchen to poke and prod Tony’s personality and show how that personality needs to get prodded a bit more to mature from a teenager skilled at lying his way out of trouble to a young adut with focus on the future.

Antonio Banderas plays Chef Jose Vatel as managing the restaurant by allowing only so much chaos in the kitchen as enables the customers to still receive their entrees on time.

Chef Jose Vatel tries to mentor Tony at least enough for him to learn how to keep a job washing dishes in his kitchen. Everyone there has to live by the one golden rule of arriving to work on time, or they are fired.

The narrative is extremely linear with Tony’s experiences in the kitchen with Vatel lining up in chronological order with scenes about the love interest. Johnson creates more and more scenes with Tony and Nancy as she moves from being disinterested and dismissive of Tony to becoming intrigued and smitten.

The story has a few restaurant and chef cliches, such as the kitchen staff managing to prepare meals in absolute chaos, and then everyone sitting down at the end of the day to share a meal together.

Tony is an introverted teenager who learns through the summer how to open-up emotionally and become the Anthony Bourdain celebrated around the world.

Sal, played by Leo Woodall, and Stavros, played by Stavros Halkins, play extraverts in the kitchen that bring Tony along as collateral damage in the summer seaside resort area.

Johnson makes Tony an endearing character as a liar by giving him a fool’s heart for high school love. The storyline gradually pulls at the heart strings and eventually creates an emotive effect, especially knowing the attachment the world will develop with the many personal travel stories of the more mature Anthony Bourdain.

Tony (2026) is currently screening in theatres.