The callow youth of Anthony Bourdain

  In the summer of 1975, a callow 19-year-old from New Jersey traveled to Provincetown, Mass., a certified mecca of free-style living. Tony (later to become celebrity chef and TV star Anthony Bourdain) spent the summer working in restaurants and partying. 

 At the time, Bourdain was dealing with rejection for a writing fellowship at Vassar, the college he attended. But that didn't stop him from claiming to be a writer to anyone who’d listen. 

 Bourdain assayed this early part of his life in Kitchen Confidential (2000), a bestseller that helped boost his public profile and establish his reputation as a bad boy of culinary arts. 

  In the movie, Tony, a renegade young Bourdain  (Dominic Sessa) follows a girl (Emilia Jones) he has fallen for to Provincetown. Once there, he lands a restaurant job and sleeps on a hammock on the porch of the Portuguese restaurateur (Antonio Banderas) who will become his mentor.

  So goes the movie-altered version of this fledgling period of Bourdain's life. Johnson turns Tony into a coming-of-age story in which a young man learns to accept the use of the more formal  “Anthony,” a decision that's emblematic of his emerging seriousness about food.

   The movie opens with a telling quote from Kitchen Confidential in which the mature Anthony looks back at his young self: “I was — to be frank — a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless lout, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” 

    We don't spend much time wondering whether this knockabout kid will ruin his life. We know Tony's arrogance will make way for the man who became a worthy guide through the world of food — no matter how exotic the fare. Bourdain's travelogue and food expeditions also yielded one of the best-written shows on television.

     In that sense, Johnson’s movie can't help being a bit of a cheat. We know the immature jerk of Tony will mature. We also know that Tony's pretensions about being a writer eventually became real; as a writer, he matched a broad range of interests with keen powers of observation. He didn't have to pretend to be smart; he was smart.

     Filled with drinking, drugs, and carousing, Tony's youthful summer is set against the noisy mayhem of a kitchen backdrop. Tony makes novice mistakes but eventually gains some footing. He discovers that he could feel at home in a kitchen, a feeling I'd liken to what some of us felt about the newsrooms where we learned to be reporters, places where we thought we could belong.

     A small cast of kitchen characters includes Sal (Leo Woodall), a womanizing, cocaine-snorting oyster shucker and prep cook who wears his callousness with a confidence Tony can't match. 

    Johnson’s story includes an incident in which the restaurant suffers a major calamity. Other scenes depict Tony's wobbly relationship with Jones’ Nancy. She's the woman who eventually would become Bourdain's first wife. 

    Credit Banderas with a weary and wise performance as a chef who's so religious he makes Tony accompany him to church on Sunday. Banderas's character presides over a band of young rogues but he respects the disciplined ways of the kitchen. He may not be a the top of his game, but he knows where the peaks are.

    Tony stands as a decent preview of a life that was destined to become more interesting after the movie’s redemptive conclusion. The adult Bourdain was better company than his 19-year-old self -- and more interesting, as well.

     Bourdain committed suicide in June of 2018. He was 61. Johnson minimizes suggestions about the tragic end awaiting the cocky kid who Sessa brings to life. He sticks to the world Bourdain inhabited before his life began to take shape.

      Some of the dramatic license Johnson takes bothered me, but I went along for the ride. I appreciated the movie’s willingness to spice up the coming-of-age formula. I also realized that in this post-Bear era, I could still appreciate a foray into the bustling world of a professional kitchen, even in a tourist trap of a restaurant that was a long way from Brasserie Les Halles, the now gone New York eatery where Bourdain became executive chef.

     Nineteen-year-old Tony probably would have had to borrow a few bucks to purchase even a moderately priced appetizer at Brasserie Les Halles. Tony's mix of comedy and colorful incidents will do until someone makes a movie about the grown-up who fascinated us with his adventurous spirit and knowledge. That might make for a more memorable movie.

      

      

Trying to freshen an old formula

    

Paul Hunham might be the most hated teacher at Barton Academy, the fictional New England prep school where much of The Holdovers takes place. Caustic with his students, many of whom he regards as certifiable idiots, Hunham could be the subject of a movie entitled, "Good Riddance, Mr Chips" -- at least as far as most of Barton's students are concerned. 

  Director Alexander Payne focuses The Holdovers on one of Hunhum's dreariest assignments; he's asked to supervise students who, for various reasons, must remain at Barton during Christmas break. 

  Staying at the school when everyone else is enjoying family and friends seems like punishment for those who must endure reduced heat at the school, less-than-festive meals, and the notion that elsewhere great times are unfolding.

   In part, The Holdovers functions as a showcase for Paul Giamatti, who brings a dose of Scrooge to the holiday season, presuming Scrooge had been interested in classical education and the Peloponnesian Wars. Giamatti, who starred in Payne's Sideways, wrings plenty of bitterness from a role that feeds him a steady, if slightly repetitive, stream of nasty dialogue.

   Although a group of boys begins the Christmas break under Hunham's care,  David Hemingson's screenplay contrives to reduce their number to one (Dominic Sessa). Sessa's Angus Tully becomes Barton's last abandoned student. His mother and new stepfather want to spend their holiday vacation alone. 

   Angus stews in his own bitterness, a bright kid who's willing to stand-up to Hunham and who, we know, from the outset eventually will establish a relationship with a teacher who needs to have his humanity revived -- at least partially.

    The school's cook (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) also remains at Barton. Randolph provides deeply felt support as a woman burdened by the loss of her son -- one of the school's few Black students -- to the Vietnam War. The story takes place during the 1970s.

     Payne spices a predictable arc with attempts at variety, a Christmas party thrown by one of the school's employees (Carrie Preston) and a trip to Boston that Angus wants to make to escape the stir-crazy Barton confines, for example.

      Credit Payne with keeping the movie from choking on Christmas corn. He tempers a happily-ever-after ending with revelations about Hunham, whose life has sad underpinnings that raise issues about rich preppie entitlement.

       Although there's plenty to enjoy here, The Holdovers suffers because of a length (two hours and 13 minutes) that seems excessive considering that some of the scenes feel over-extended and the movie, like its characters, sometimes seems to be looking for things to do rather than unfolding organically.

         Still, Giamatti and Sessa hold up their end of the bargain, and Randolph brings a credible sense of pragmatism to a role that easily could have become a cliche. She shows how much emotional dimension a supporting actor can add to a narrowly focused movie that tells a story that, for Angus, may become an oft-told anecdote in his successfully evolving life.