‘Tony’: Anthony Bourdain’s Early Days of Youthful Folly Are Captured by a Great Dominic Sessa

Alci Rengifo

Fame can be an accidental turn of events for many lives. Behind some legendary names, the origin story can be fascinating because of how few hints there are of what would come later. The late Anthony Bourdain is now best known as a globe-trotting chef who achieved international fame through television, but Matt Johnson’s “Tony” focuses on the days when all Bourdain strived to be was a writer. To be more precise, this biopic takes place in 1975, when Bourdain was nineteen and, per his own admission later, a selfish, aimless punk. This fun, sharp biopic works by pretending it has no idea at all who Bourdain will later become. You can walk into it without having ever watched his “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” series on CNN or read his bestselling books. On its own, the story works as the portrait of a young screw up who stumbles into the kitchen life.

Dominic Sessa plays Bourdain, who goes by Tony for most of the film, as a too self-assured kid from New Jersey trying to get a writing fellowship at Vassar College. He sits in front of a sour-faced committee of older academics announcing his desire to write a novel that will be a hybrid of the Beats and George Orwell. Tony’s home life is a portrait of mundane middle class America. His father Pierre (Rich Sommer) is a cheerful, affectionate parent while mom Gladys (Dagmara Dominczyk) feels like a dominating perfectionist. She gives him a skeptical look when at dinner, Tony assures the family that he will get the fellowship. Of course, he does not get it. While drowning his sorrows at a bar, with some nunchucks tucked in his pants, Tony catches sight of Nancy (Emilia Jones), his big high school crush. After boasting about the fellowship he does not have, the aspiring author learns Nancy is spending the summer in Provincetown before starting college at Vassar. What is a penniless would-be writer to do? Tony decides to make his way to Provincetown as well, without telling Nancy and without any plans for what to do once he’s there.

Officially, the screenplay by Johnson, Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels and Lou Howe is based on Bourdain’s famous memoir, “Kitchen Confidential.” Its focus are the first few chapters where Bourdain describes his initiation into working in a restaurant, while borrowing bits of information from other sources, since Bourdain was prone to romanticizing events and edit out details. Like last year’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” the approach works because this one slice of the personality’s life contains so much of who he was. For the broader strokes of Bourdain’s life the best film around is still the Morgan Neville documentary “Roadrunner.” To capture the hectic, wistful nature of nineteen-year-old Tony’s world, Matt Johnson is a rather inspired choice. The Canadian filmmaker is best known for the guerrilla style of his web series “Nirvana the Band the Show,” co-created with composer and musician Jay McCarrol, and its hilarious film adaptation released earlier this year, “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.” This story requires a sense of humor and rebellious wit. 

Dominic Sessa, who gained renown with his debut in Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers,” also proves to be an inspired choice to play Bourdain by channeling instead of imitating. He does not need to concern himself with evoking someone who isn’t famous yet in the world of the story. His Tony is a sensitive, moody teen verging on adulthood, capable of making wildly dumb, selfish choices. He’s like that kid that will always exist in some high school somewhere who takes heroes like Jim Morrison too literally. There isn’t even a clear spark for his rebellion aside from the annoyance of having boring parents, which isn’t always the worst excuse for getting away. Chasing after Nancy is a deceptively fun impulse that goes with Tony’s romantic ethos. Sometimes we need to follow blind impulse to see more of the world. 

For Tony, first getting a sense of the wider world comes through finding himself drunk and destitute in the streets of Provincetown. He is then found by a Brazilian,“Chef” (Antonio Banderas), the owner of an establishment from where the young traveler gets kicked out for basically harassing the waitress, Mary (Monica Raymund). Played by Antonio Banderas in some of his best work since Pedro Almodóvar’s “Pain and Glory,” Chef is one of those wiser souls we’re lucky to find sometimes in life, clearly experienced enough to have some empathy for Tony. He lets the younger man sleep on his hammock by the sea, waking him up every day with a splash of sea water. Instead of paying rent, Tony washes dishes in Chef’s kitchen where he meets the rowdy staff, a gang of misfits faithful to how Bourdain describes them in his book. Dimitri (Stavros Halkias) looks like a chubby biker gang reject with a foul mouth. Tyrone (Michael Jibrin) grabs a hot pan without any protection after Tony yelps in pain when he goes for it without getting a warning. Sal (Leo Woodall) is closer to Tony’s age, boasting a macho attitude that includes chipping wood off every door of any given bedroom where he sleeps with a tourist or local. He also shares his cocaine around the kitchen, though Chef never partakes. The Brazilian chief stays away from the craziness. What matters is keeping the orders flowing to the customers walking into this rickety joint.

Johnson and cinematographer Michael Bauman capture this whole world with a mixture of breeze and grit, contrasting the attractive Cape Cod shores and small town ambiance with Tony’s restlessness. While tourists may be enjoying the beach, the cooks are getting cut, gutting fish and getting into brawls to the Stooges blaring on the soundtrack. You may crave a lobster sandwich afterwards, yet the film isn’t an endless stream of food close-ups. This is a universal coming-of-age tale, which has a particularly relatable feel since young Bourdain was not exactly Sid Vicious. In 1975, he’s still a lucid enough guy to see the danger warnings when Sal starts doing heroin. Tony’s obsessive, addictive nature keeps being channeled towards Nancy. Here too, the material avoids becoming a cliché romance. This is a story about how experiences shape character. Tony’s insecurities lead him to use lying as a mask. He lies to Chef about having kitchen experience, which will prove costly, and he lies to Nancy about being in town to write a book. At nineteen it can be crippling to like someone while feeling unworthy, especially when Nancy is already dating some tough local pizza guy. 

Like “The Motorcycle Diaries,” this is an excellent film about a famous rebel where the early years begin to form an image of the future figure, flaws included. Tony’s obsessive nature towards Nancy hints at how this aspect of his personality would become so tragic as an older man when his relationship with Asia Argento spiraled out of control. Chef notices that for a guy claiming to be a writer, Tony doesn’t do much writing. The young man doesn’t realize he is acquiring the material for what will become his breakthrough book decades later in his forties. The seeds of the world traveler and seeker are there when he hops on the boat to Cape Cod, gazing out at the waves. Learning how to properly shuck an oyster and set a plate becomes in hindsight an elegant life lesson in this film. Tony could not imagine the kinds of high-end kitchens he would later run, in the same way none of us know where life will take us tomorrow. We can never know what the real Anthony Bourdain would have said about it, but it is made by people who at least understand what made his story special and infectious.

“Tony” releases Aug. 7 in select theaters and expands Aug. 21 nationwide.