Please, take a seat.
A beautiful young couple, I must say. Quite exquisite. Our pleasure to feed you. Shall we start with a drink? I always recommend the Chianti, the house. Excellent vintage and pairs favourably with the hors d’ouevres; simply makes your mouth water, thinking of it.
Though, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the mains – they always are. The steak is to die for; it melts in your mouth; the marrow accoutrement, too. A prime grade. But, we do things somewhat differently here at Hawthorne Island, so I implore: listen closely to ‘The Menu’.
What has happened to high-end dining? Often, there’s nothing even close to an actual meal served. And that’s the question posited throughout director Mark Mylod’s ‘The Menu’, a black comedy thriller following a couple as they travel to a coastal island to eat at an exclusive restaurant where the chef has prepared a lavish course of meals, with some “shocking surprises.”
And you might be thinking: Ah, it’s about food, I get it. A bit of a ‘Most Dangerous Game’ situation, huh? We are actually the meals and all that. I see you, surprises. I know what you are – but no, you really don’t. The Menu sounds like a standard fair where self-inflated rich people get their comeuppance in a horrible, twisted way, and you’re partially right, but it’s not just that. There are several courses to writers Seth Reiss and Will Tracy’s film.
Unlike the meals served up by Ralph Fiennes – who is at his absolute Fienn-est (couldn’t help it) – as Chef Slowik, The Menu has actual substance. Driven by a constant satirising of the unbridled emptiness of fine dining, which has become more about status for decadent aristocrats than it has about actually feeling full, The Menu is a biting film that never disappoints.
You might even come back for seconds.
‘The Menu’ (R) is opening at the Bowen Summergarden Cinema on Friday, November 25.
Ralph Fiennes is brilliant in ‘The Menu’, a dark thriller that takes aim at the vapidity of upper echelon foodie culture
