Toronto film festival: Ralph Fiennes is a sinister chef with a deviously designed menu in a fun, if throwaway, stew of class satire and torture porn
Boasting a director, co-writer and producer who have all served on HBO’s banner business drama Succession, restaurant thriller The Menu arrives with similar ingredients, just cooked at a different temperature. It’s as sleekly designed, all sharp marble edges and oversized wine glasses, and also focused on the grotesqueries of the haves, here being forced to deal with the have nots, serving them an elaborate multi-course dinner at an absurdly ostentatious private island, $1,250 a head, TBC on whether they’ll get to keep their heads by dessert.
The intimate 12-person group represent different types of wealth – old money, new money, Hollywood money – but all are united by their desire to be experiencing the very best. Here that best is taken to the very extreme by pretentious chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), whose idea of food is less about enjoyment and more about admiration. His courses are prepared and presented with maximum theatricality and they’re accepted with chin-stroking awe by most of the diners, apart from a bemused Margo (Anya Taylor-Joy) the last-minute replacement date of Tyler (Nicholas Hault), a rather sycophantic foodie fanboy. She’s the voice of reason breaking the coos for a plate of foam and leaves (she calls it the “basecamp of mount bullshit”), but her presence soon irks the chef whose strict plan for the evening didn’t count on her attendance.
