Anthony Bourdain contained multitudes, but his true magnetism lay in an insatiable curiosity about food, people and the world beyond his own. This month, Tony premieres—a moving biopic drawn from a brief yet formative chapter of his 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential, and the life behind it. Part coming-of-age story, part origin tale, it captures the restless young man before he became a legend.
In Tony, Director Matt Johnson focuses on one transformative summer in Provincetown, when a directionless aspiring writer discovers the chaos and camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen. The result is a warm, unconventional story, elevated by Dominic Sessa and a superb Antonio Banderas.
After missing out on a college writing fellowship, Tony flees to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he finds work washing dishes in a seafood restaurant. Its head chef, played by Banderas, takes him under his wing, recognising something Tony cannot yet see in himself. While the film takes liberties with Bourdain’s history, it captures the relentless ambition that would come to define him.
Much of Tony unfolds in the kitchen, which becomes a character in its own right. Johnson vividly evokes the exhaustion, bravado and unlikely camaraderie of restaurant life, while 1970s Provincetown provides a hazy countercultural backdrop of bad decisions and youthful freedom.
Sessa, who broke through in The Holdovers, is excellent as the gangly, arrogant and painfully insecure Tony. He wisely avoids impersonating the gravel-voiced figure Bourdain would become, giving us instead the raw materials: the sharp tongue, roving intelligence and hunger for a life less ordinary.
Emilia Jones plays Nancy, whom Tony pursues with more confidence than honesty, revealing how readily his charm can tip into selfishness. Leo Woodall, Stavros Halkias, Monica Raymund and Michael Jibrin round out the restaurant’s unruly ensemble.
But the film belongs to Banderas. His Chef is quietly reckoning with a career that never became what he imagined, and his growing affection for Tony gives the story its emotional heart.
Tony succeeds because it resists explaining the Anthony Bourdain we think we know. Instead, it finds him before the fame and the cultivated cynicism: a selfish, searching young man beginning to glimpse the life he might build. It is a gentler portrait than some viewers will expect, but also a more affecting one.
Tony is in cinemas nationwide from 20th August.
