Directed by Matt Johnson, “Tony” revisits a formative chapter in the life of Anthony Bourdain, the American chef, author and travel documentarian. Drawing on Bourdain’s bestselling memoir, “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly,” the film follows a young man on the cusp of adulthood who has yet to understand what discipline, responsibility and meaningful work demand.
The film opens in the summer of 1975 as Tony (Dominic Sessa), then a 19-year-old student at Vassar College, hopes to secure a summer writing fellowship. When he fails to get it, he lies about having been awarded it and follows his crush, Nancy (Emilia Jones), to Provincetown, Massachusetts, a seaside town where she plans to spend the summer. Penniless, he ends up at The Flagship, a local seafood restaurant, where he harasses a waitress and is thrown out by Chef (Antonio Banderas), who then hires him as a dishwasher the following day — Tony’s first job.
From the start, Johnson presents Tony as an unlikeable young man whose inflated sense of self far exceeds his actual abilities. He is entitled, socially awkward and unduly convinced of his own potential. The characterisation echoes Bourdain’s own admission in “Kitchen Confidential,” where he writes, “I was — to be frank — a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.”
Tony’s lack of direction is underscored by a recurring motif: Each morning, Chef rouses the hungover Tony by dousing him with a bucket of water. The disparity between Tony’s self-image and his actual capabilities becomes apparent even in the kitchen’s most routine tasks. When Chef teaches him to open oysters, Tony fails to pay attention and disregards the instruction to use a towel. The suspenseful score, coupled with his increasingly strained grunts, makes the impending injury almost comically inevitable. Later, while washing ketchup bottles, Tony tries to carry them all at once rather than handle them individually, predictably dropping and breaking them. Though humorous, these episodes expose a more fundamental deficiency: Tony lacks the patience and humility required to learn, treating even elementary tasks as though they were beneath him.
Despite Tony’s shortcomings, Chef continues to believe in him and offer guidance. Johnson’s decision to leave the character unnamed is significant. He serves as a universal father figure, someone who recognizes Tony’s potential and attempts to teach him the work ethic necessary to realise it.
Chef stands as a foil to Sal (Leo Woodall), Tony’s co-worker, who offers an alternative path full of parties and drugs. The two men become opposing forces in Tony’s life, like the angel and devil perched on his shoulders.
One particularly striking juxtaposition makes this conflict clear. Despite Tony’s professed disbelief, Chef forces him to attend church, where Tony becomes mesmerised by the light filtering through the stained glass windows. For a moment, his attention is captured by something larger than himself. The sequence is immediately contrasted with an image of him watching Sal inject heroin into his arm. The editing draws attention to Tony’s gaze: One scene offers the possibility of transcendence; the other, the lure of self-destruction. Where he directs his attention and which world he allows himself to enter ultimately determines the course of his life.
The conflict between these two influences comes into sharper focus when Sal punches Chef and quits. Chef responds by calling him a “sin eater,” a reference to a figure in folklore believed to consume food left at a deceased person’s grave to absorb their sins. As Chef explains to Tony, the sin eater takes on the darkness so that others may remain in the light, signalling to Tony that this is not who he is and that he must resist Sal’s influence, a realization Tony acknowledges with a quiet, knowing silence.
Tony’s attempt to “remain in the light” is far from straightforward. Despite his growing relationship with Chef, he continues to struggle with his overinflated ego and an inability to face his own imperfection. Their relationship collapses when Tony accidentally sets fire to the restaurant and, instead of apologizing, lashes out at Chef’s profession and the life he has built.
When Chef tells him he was about to offer him a job, Tony scoffs: “You thought I wanted a job? I’m a writer.” Chef mockingly replies that he has never seen him write anything before delivering the film’s most cutting assessment: “You could be anything. But you know what you are? Nothing.”
It is a brutal exchange, but also the film’s thematic centrepiece. Chef is pointing to the distance between Tony’s potential and his achievements. Tony’s self-sabotaging persona is rooted in his perfectionism. He is so attached to the person he imagines himself becoming that he cannot bear the humiliation of being a beginner. Rather than risk failing at the things he claims to want, he avoids putting himself to the test.
There is something distinctly contemporary about this portrait. Tony embodies a familiar predicament: the tendency to romanticise an idealised future while being too afraid to begin the imperfect journey towards it. This also echoes Bourdain’s real-life trajectory: He spent decades working in kitchens before finally publishing “Kitchen Confidential” at the age of 44.
After the summer ends, Tony leaves college and applies to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA). During his admissions interview, he introduces himself by his full name, Anthony. In the end, Tony does not become “nothing”, as Chef predicted, but Anthony Bourdain, the man audiences would come to know and love.
Knowing Bourdain died by suicide in 2018 gives this moment of promise a tragic undertow. The film invites us to believe in Tony’s capacity for change, but the viewer knows his growth, hard work, talent and professional success would not spare him from the inner turmoil that followed him throughout his life and, ultimately, into death.
Dining and Cooking