Tony review praises Dominic Sessa as young Anthony Bourdain
Variety says Matt Johnson’s A24 film follows 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain through a wild Provincetown kitchen summer.
By Poppy Nakagawa · Culture Writer
3 min read
A new Tony review from Variety gives Matt Johnson’s Anthony Bourdain biopic a warm notice, with chief film critic Owen Gleiberman singling out Dominic Sessa’s turn as the young food-world icon.
The A24 film, titled “Tony,” follows Bourdain in 1975, when he was a 19-year-old college student spending the summer in Provincetown and taking his first restaurant kitchen job, according to Variety. The review says the film draws on early chapters of Bourdain’s 2000 memoir, “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.”
Gleiberman writes that the movie presents the summer as an origin story, while arguing that Bourdain already had the voice, restlessness and contradictions that later made him famous. The film is described as partly fictionalized and shaped around a romance, while still being faithful to the person Bourdain was becoming.
What is Tony about?
“Tony” centers on Bourdain after he fails to land a summer writing fellowship at Vassar College and heads to Provincetown, where Nancy, played by Emilia Jones, is spending the season, Variety reports. Broke and pretending he received the fellowship, he ends up washing dishes at a bare-bones seafood restaurant called the Flagship.
Antonio Banderas plays the restaurant owner, identified only as Chef, who gives Tony work and a place to sleep on his back porch, according to the review. The critic says Tony starts in the dish pit, moves into food prep and learns the rhythms of a kitchen under Chef’s stern, watchful guidance.
The cast also includes Leo Woodall as Sal, Stavros Halkias as Stavros and Dagmara Domińczyk as Bourdain’s mother, Gladys. Variety says the film shows Tony moving through late-night parties, fights, drugs and kitchen chaos, while slowly discovering that restaurant work has become a kind of education.
Why Variety says Dominic Sessa stands out
Gleiberman calls Sessa’s performance a major step up from his breakout role in “The Holdovers,” writing that “Tony” shows him as a true screen presence. The review describes his Bourdain as talkative, angry, charming, awkward and magnetic, a young man who can bluff his way through embarrassment.
The critic also praises Banderas, saying he gives Chef a mix of softness, discipline and authority. In Variety’s reading, Chef becomes a mentor because he is everything Tony is not: steady, focused and devoted to the work in front of him.
Johnson, whose previous work includes “BlackBerry” and “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie,” directs from a screenplay credited to Todd Bartels, Lou Howe, Matthew Miller and Johnson. Michael Bauman is listed as cinematographer, Curt Lobb and Robert Upchurch as editors, and Jay McCarrol as composer.
Variety reviewed the film at Dolby 88 in New York on July 15. The listed running time is 106 minutes, and the MPA rating is R.
This story draws on original reporting from Variety.