Anybody else seen Beatriz at Dinner?
It stars Salma Hayek and John Lithgow. The acting is fantastic. It is in my opinion, Hayek’s best performance I’ve seen her in.
Hayek plays Beatriz, a natural healer, massage therapist who works at an alternative cancer treatment facility somewhere around LA. She also does outcalls and shows up at a mansion overlooking the Pacific ocean to give a massage to the woman of the house, Kathy, played by Connie Britton of Nashville fame. As Beatriz is leaving, her car won’t start, she calls a friend who says he can’t get out there to help her with her car until later that evening. She explains this to Kathy, who says they are having a dinner party that night, and invites her stay for dinner. The dinner is actually a business dinner with Kathy’s husband’s business partner, Doug, played by John Lithgow. Doug is supposed to be like one of the Koch brothers.
We learn that Kathy’s daughter (Tara, who is away at college) had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease and was treated at the clinic that Beatriz works, and that is how the family got to know Beatriz. Beatriz and Tara are very close.
There are a few other guests, but basically the movie is a social commentary on a variety of things: climate change, imperialism, income divide, etc.
The ending of the movie is very disappointing. But I blame that on a bad script.