{"id":25561,"date":"2017-06-22T20:44:06","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T00:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=25561"},"modified":"2017-06-22T20:44:54","modified_gmt":"2017-06-23T00:44:54","slug":"beatriz-at-dinner-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/22\/beatriz-at-dinner-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Beatriz at Dinner (2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Beatriz is a healer, a holistic health practitioner, whose car breaks down at a wealthy client\u2019s house after she gave her a massage.\u00a0 The client invites her to stay for a celebratory dinner party her husband and herself are hosting that night.\u00a0 Like a fish out of water, Beatriz has dinner with three extremely wealthy couples with whom she has little to nothing in common.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Written by Mike White and directed by Miguel Arteta, Beatriz at Dinner takes the two opposing lifestyles and pits them against each other through discussion, viewpoints, opinions, and values.\u00a0 The situation shows itself first through comparison on houses, clothing, and other visual cues in the film, then as the characters get to know Beatriz and vice-versa, their differences start to show in more than the price of their houses, cars, and clothes.\u00a0 The divide gets wider as the character get deeper into their values and beliefs.\u00a0 Of course, it can be guessed which the writer and director want to show as to which is better and which is worse.\u00a0 However, it is not pushed down the viewer\u2019s throat, but they are left to make up their own minds, depending on their own values and core beliefs.\u00a0 The film shows both sides as doing things not necessarily the right way, but of course, one may come up on top in terms of what is right.\u00a0 The film does not take the viewer for an idiot, creating a story that is easy to follow and yet has a lot of messages in terms of good versus bad in our society.\u00a0 The way they leave some questions unanswered also helps in achieving this goal.<\/p>\n

The choice of cast here was very important.\u00a0 In the lead, Salma Hayek plays a passionate woman with a heart of gold and the hands of an angel.\u00a0 She shows her character\u2019s interest in every living being through her actions and emotions.\u00a0 A lot goes on in her expressions, her face and body language giving as much to the performance as her words and how she delivers them.\u00a0 Playing her polar opposite, John Lithgow is direct, strong, and opinionated.\u00a0 He is not the funny Lithgow here, but the very serious one with the occasional touch of humor.\u00a0 His performance balances with Hayek\u2019s beautifully.\u00a0 The rest of the cast including Connie Britton, Chloe Sevigny, Amy Landecker, Jay Duplas, and John Early, all give good performance with a few spots of unevenness, but those are barely noticeable, giving the ensemble strength and cohesion.<\/p>\n

The film takes places mostly in one mansion in a Los Angeles gated-community.\u00a0 This house is used to almost its full potential, with great views outside the house, its yard, and some of its rooms.\u00a0 The kitchen, dining room, and living room show opulence with taste which contrasts beautifully well with Beatriz\u2019 house which is more personal, more cramped, but also less interior-decorator-y.\u00a0 The way this is all shot by Wyatt Garfield gives both houses as well as the clinic where Beatriz works character and personality, establishing the characters living and working there even more differences and show of their values.<\/p>\n

Beatriz at Dinner is a fairly short feature film that is easy to watch even though it deals with many harder subjects throughout its runtime.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t push its agenda down the viewer\u2019s throat, leaving them to follow along and make up their own mind.\u00a0 The performances are strong all around, with Salma Hayek giving a stellar turn as Beatriz.\u00a0 It\u2019s a film that looks good, sounds good, has great performances, and does not handhold the viewer through everything going on, every opinion they should form about the characters and their lives.<\/p>\n

In Select Theaters Friday.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beatriz is a healer, a holistic health practitioner, whose car breaks down at a wealthy client\u2019s house after she gave her a massage.\u00a0 The client invites her to stay for a celebratory dinner party her husband and herself are hosting that night.\u00a0 Like a fish out of water, Beatriz has dinner with three extremely wealthy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[219,302],"class_list":["post-25561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy","tag-drama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25563,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25561\/revisions\/25563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}