TONY

“It’s bildungsroman - it’s German and you say it as a single word. Bildungsroman, not ‘buildings Roman’, Antony,” tuts Tony Bourdain’s mother (and she is the only person who calls him Anthony…), smiling gleefully at his schoolboy error and the opportunity for some oneupmanship and matriarchal disdain. “I hope you didn’t say it like that in the interview.” And he did, of course. He did say “buildings Roman” in the interview for the writing fellowship from Vassar College he was arrogant enough to believe he had won. He had not. And a naive mispronunciation of a German word for a literary genre was the least of his missteps, more likely the arrogance, the entire lack of preparation and the blatant disregard for the authority of the somewhat baffled panel cost him the summertime scholarship.

And so begins Tony Bourdain’s bildungsroman, his own coming of age story, wherein he chases a high school crush (a slightly underplayed and consequently rather boring Emilia Jones, providing a catalyst for the misadventures, but little substance) to Provincetown, Massachusetts, and somehow the sparkle in his eye is sufficient for grizzled Chef (Antonio Banderas) to forgive his late night drunkenness, impropriety with lady bar staff and the inexplicable wielding of nunchucks to take him under his wing and give him a hammock in which to rest his head each night in consideration for dishwashing services. Bourdain will not lift a pen during the summer months of 1975, but he will learn how to shuck oysters, to respect those with superior culinary knowledge and experience, the hard graft and discipline of a working kitchen, to stand up for himself and his values when it is so very tempting to succumb to temptation, and he will learn exactly who he does not want to become (his hard-partying, womanising foil is played by Leo Woodall, also somewhat one dimensional and lacking in substance as a character). This is the summer when Tony Bourdain grows the fuck up.

When news spread of Anthony Bourdain’s suicide some 8 years ago (where does the time go?!), the public grieved openly, loudly, palpably. He was beloved. He lifted the saucier’s lid on chefs’ hijinx and restaurant shenanigans when he published Kitchen Confidential and became an overnight sensation, proceeding to make a whole host of TV shows about cooking and food and travel, most famously CNN’s Parts Unknown. I think he was so treasured because he was as open and respectful and welcoming when he sat across the table from a Thai street-food vendor as from President Barack Obama himself, genuinely interested in his fellow human beings and what they could teach him… and feed him. He was possessed of a lovable, roguish, entirely forgivable fallibility, embracing his shortcomings and rebuffing airs and graces. If one were very annoying… and one is… one might say he was the OG of authenticity. And it didn’t hurt matters that he was tall (6’4”) and devastatingly handsome with those gorgeous doey eyes, did it? Swoon….

Upon hearing about A24’s biopic plans and the casting of Dominic Sessa as Bourdain, I confess I was not convinced the film would work on the basis of Sessa’s… ermmm… now, how do I say this without offending everyone and revealing myself to be shallow as fuck? Ermmmm….. Inferior hotness? Thermally challenged countenance? Lesser pyrexia-causing tendencies? I don’t think many would disagree that Anthony Bourdain was hella hot and Dominic Sessa is significantly less hella hot, but the suspension of disbelief is a marvellous thing and within a few frames of Matt Johnson’s TONY you’ll see Bourdain in Sessa, or how the latter might become the former if he can just grow up a bit, stop using big words he doesn’t really understand and excavate the extraordinary charm upon which he’ll build a remarkable career and fanbase from the thick layer of superciliousness (big Bourdain-like word alert!) which conceals it. Sessa gives us a remarkable performance, imo (as he did in THE HOLDOVERS).

Wisely focused on a single summer and not endeavouring to pack all 61 years of a life into a tedious biopic (albeit still managing to have a ridunculous number of lengthy montages…), the film makes just one reference to suicide in the form of a painting of Francois Vatel, the master of ceremonies at a 17th century feast prepared in honour of King Louis XIV, who was so distressed by the late arrival of the fish course that he killed himself. The painting explains Chef’s preoccupation with punctuality, but there is also a lesson here of the “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” variety, is there not? Thank goodness we have Deliveroo and Postmates and there are now considerably fewer Vatels impaling themselves through the heart when their sea bream is 15 mins overdue. Still, suicides are very often impulsive and illogical and therefore entirely impossible for loved ones to understand as they are submerged in inexplicable grief in the aftermath. Imagine what must have been going through Madame Vatel’s mind when she heard the news that her husband had valued the timing of the fish course more highly than his love for her, for their children? The sad, selfish fucker.

For my part, I contemplate suicide relatively often, engaging with it as an option and discarding it quickly in favour of getting on with a life which I have found somewhat difficult of late as a result of long-term illness, perennial poverty and the heartbreak of divorce. I genuinely think it is mentally healthy to actively acknowledge ending it all as a possibility, not least as in so doing I am quickly prompted to remember I have two phenomenal daughters, unbelievably kind and generous friends, more than two decades of a deeply loving and fulfilling marriage behind me, a pair of Chloe heels I haven’t even worn yet, and a career which may not be successful by many measures, but which has been exciting and enriching and rewarding in its own ways. Actively assessing suicide is a direct route to genuine gratitude, in my experience (…until it isn’t, I guess; and I acknowledge men account for up to 80% of suicides worldwide, shockingly, and suicide is the single leading cause of death for men under 50 in the UK, and I do not take it lightly).

For his part, Bourdain appears to have given little sign of psychological distress as he filmed in Alsace in France before being found unresponsive in his hotel room. We only know a series of arguments with his partner preceded his catastrophic decision to end his life (and no, I am not blaming her… life is way more complicated and knotty and unfathomable than to justify placing responsibility for a man’s suicide at the feet of a woman, imo, even if I can understand why people are desperate for someone to blame). We’ll never know what he was thinking or feeling, whether the fish was late or whatever other such triviality kept a man from raising his child. We’ll never understand the tragic ending, sprung as it is from Bourdain’s parts unknown, and so we are left with what we do know and can understand: his writing, his multitudinous shows, a gluttony of images from a life well lived, his joie de vivre. And now this surprisingly wonderful film. RIP Anthony Bourdain. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️