Beatriz at Dinner (2017) User Reviews (182)

a dues ex machina without the machina

[bruce_joffe · 6/10 · 18 June 2017]

{Spoiler alert: this review is written for people who have seen the movie}

The elevator speech for the movie seemed really inviting: a send-up of Trump-like self-absorbed elites encountering a fully-vested spiritual healer. The send-up didn't disappoint as we see a realistic portrayal of the "nice" people who live in world where the unwritten rule is never to see, speak, or hear anything that questions the actions, or consequences of the actions, from which their luxury derives.

Sadly, however, the movie disappointed my expectation that Beatriz' encounter with these people, particularly with the primary perpetrator, Doug, would somehow initiate a change of his life's tragic trajectory, or at least give the audience something to ponder after the credits rolled. The film didn't deliver. Instead, Beatriz gets bollixed up in her anger, fueled by uncharacteristic over-drinking, and does not effectively represent the deeply-centered, life-affirming compassionate healer that we see in the first part of the movie.

Beatriz fails to build on the surprising connection she makes with Doug when massaging his shoulders, and also when acknowledging what it was that he liked about hunting. That connection could have expanded into a real dialog. Instead, she has a violent fantasy, does nothing, and walks into ocean. Fade to black. It was a dues ex machina without the machina.

The problem, of course, is not with Beatriz, it is with the script writer, Mike White, and the director, Miguel Arteta. It wouldn't have mattered if Beatriz' encounter with Doug had succeeded in getting him to reconsider the destructive impact of his life, or if she failed. But in this movie, in spite of its exquisite setup, she doesn't even try.

I am left with this question to ponder: What could Beatriz have said to open up Doug's blinders on himself and his life?

1 - The film's director should have had her translate the song, or sing a verse in English, so the audience, as well as the people she was singing to, would know what she was singing/saying. I got only a bit of it … about enjoying the little things in life.

And then, she could have encountered Doug with something like, "What really brings you satisfaction? You have so many houses and vacation houses that it is causing rifts in your family. Can you see that more money, more business deals will still leave you feeling empty? But, you do like a challenge - a challenge in the face of danger. Consider what a challenge it would be if you worked to reverse the destructive impact of your, and your colleagues' developments."

2 - In the driveway, late in the movie, when Doug comes out of the house to have a conversation with her, and he says, "I'm dying, we're dying, the Earth is dying, so we just got to take and enjoy what we can."

Beatriz could have said something like, "and what will you leave for your grandchildren?" Or, "and where would you be today if your grandfather had lived by those words?"

Or, she could have connected to the shoulder massage saying, "Yes, Doug, you are dying. I felt it when I touched you. You haven't long. What do you want to leave as your contribution? Dead animals? Displaced people? Or, a renewal of life, and healing for some part of the Earth."

Those are two answers I've come up with, I hope others will come up with some better ideas, because there are lots of "Dougs" in the world outside the cinema theater.

By the way, I searched IMDb.com and many other websites looking for the name of her song, and the words in Spanish or English. I couldn't find anything. Where can I find this information?

Time devours the simple things

[begob · 7/10 · 3 August 2021]

When her car breaks down, a faith healer finds herself an unexpected guest at her wealthy client's business dinner, but a dark cloud looms ...

A small movie with a big theme. The lead actress is excellent and performs the after-dinner song beautifully. The pace is a little patchy, but the sets and camera work are lush, the music perfectly judged.

What holds this back is the failure to put any substance into the other guests. It's true that wealthy people and their hangers-on are often deadly dull in their pursuit of power and authority, yet there's always some flash of insight to them - a fundamental truth in how they outgrasp the rest, even if they're not fully aware of the implications. That flash is lacking, and so we get a selection of yes-men and -women with off-colour jokes and petty gripes, lorded over by a psychopath with a banal philosophy on the finiteness of existence. Perhaps the screenplay should have cornered the hostess, forcing her out of her good-manners and into a choice over the protagonist's fate.

Without that complexity, the theme isn't fleshed out, and relies on sympathy with the protagonist and nice touches, leaving a vague sense of great injustice.

One flaw in the screenplay is the leaving of the keys in the expensive car, which isn't revisited and just serves to show the sense of security of the guests. If you bring a loaded gun into a scene, you better use it.

Overall: Nice, but too simple.

Dissatisfied with the ending but still an interesting topic and enjoyable watch

[hannahggpp · 7/10 · 19 October 2017]

This film is better than its current rating.

I read comments saying that it depicted a bunch of stereotypes of super rich people. But some of them proceeded to confess that they didn't know any super rich people themselves, so...

Kathy, the wife of a rich businessman, who invites Beatriz to stay in her house for dinner, is actually a pretty nice person. Ignorant and probably subconsciously denying the truth about her husband's and Doug's dirty business but still an overall ordinary person, just like most people around us and ourselves who are fortunate enough to live in 'the free world' and refuse to admit we have anything to do with the third world's historical and ongoing suffering.

Another important thing is that this story sets in only less than a day and is told from the perspective of the protagonist Beatriz who is a working-class immigrant, AKA Alice who accidentally steps into the Wonderland of the upper class world and is quietly going 'what the heck is this place and these weird people who keep pretending I'm invisible' during the first half of the film. It's actually very funny, especially if you awkwardly find yourself relating to those fancy rich people more than Beatriz. I think that was the scriptwriter's intention all along.

Frankly, now I just roll my eyes almost every time I hear complaints about poor people blaming rich people for 'their problems', women blaming men about 'their problems', black people blaming white people for 'their problems' in films. Why? Essentially because those films included antagonists who are rich, or men, or white.

I even remember reading similar comments about Wonder Woman which conveniently ignores the fact that Wonder Woman's love interest is a surprisingly open-minded military guy (more than a bit unrealistic for his time) and not to mention her other new friends, most of them male, who are also very likable characters. I wonder what films can possibly satisfy those who can't bare the sight of any regular sexist guy who understandably embodies the social norms (however problematic they are) of their time, or our time. A film about Harvey Weinstein's scandal is gonna come out in the future and some people are gonna hate it so much. And the presence of positive male characters are still not gonna save it from being called another man- hating piece of rubbish. And of course those actresses who are sexually harassed or assaulted are to be blamed, unlike the children in Spotlight whose circumstances are SO essentially different. Women and poor people are definitely two special groups who are mainly responsible for all of 'their problems'.

Beatriz at Dinner is not about slut-shaming rich people. If the mere depiction of morally ambiguous characters (minus Doug who is...let's just say not that ambiguous) equals stereotyping and hating rich people, then I give up. This film sucks. The Big Short sucks. The wolf of the wall street sucks. And so does any film that criticises capitalism and, in this case, its very real consequences of environmental damage and people, domestically and abroad, who suffer from the systematically sanctioned and normalised oppression and mass harm.

I do think the ending is pretty anticlimactic and in an unnecessary way. I won't spoil anything but because Beatriz is herself a morally ambiguous character (who we only thought we knew because she's a massage therapist who likes animals and saves Kathy's daughter from cancer) who has a past we don't know that much about, I think it is perfectly fine to just stop at that climactic scene towards the end and let that be the ending. It could potentially take the depth of the film, at least as I understand it, to a higher level and stimulate more discussion about the important issues raised in it.

I am a thriller junkie and the ending is what stops me from calling this film a thriller-that-pretends-to-be-drama, which is a bit of a shame. I still enjoyed it from start to (almost) the end. One thing that stands out to me the most, more than a month after watching it, is actually a song performed by Beatriz after the dinner. It still resonates with me and possibly also those super rich characters in the film who, like me, cannot even understand its lyrics.

A Failed Satire

[bkrauser-81-311064 · 6/10 · 25 June 2017]

Beatriz at Dinner sells itself as the "first important film of the Trump Era," a galvanizing must-see sparring between two embodiment's of the modern American political landscape. In the blue corner the genteel, multi-cultural, bilingual immigrant Beatriz (Hayek) and the red, the boorish super-rich real-estate mogul Doug Strutt (Lithgow). Who will come out on top? Surely not the audience.

The optimal title for this movie should have been Beatriz and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. She begins her morning feeding her dogs and calming her bleating pet lamb before driving down to work at a ramshackle clinic in downtown L.A.. She claims to be a healer - massage, reiki, rolfing - the kind of stuff that would sound like hokum if Beatriz wasn't so emphatically a believer. Her last task of the day involves a long drive to Malibu to meet with a wealthy client. Her car dies on the driveway, thus her hosts reluctantly invite her to a dinner they are throwing to celebrate a new business venture.

The movie's rising action unfolds largely as you would expect. The slight misreading of social cues and awkward culture clashes turn into a snowballing array of devilishly clever faux pas. The dinner itself, while never quite as caustic as it should be, nevertheless showcases the characters as a menagerie of conflicting personalities all containing themselves to conform to social graces.

Then much like Beatriz after one too many glasses of white wine, the movie just seems to forget itself. It sidesteps the character dynamics it so lovingly created and all but deflates any chance of investment. Beatriz and Doug by this point are no longer human but pallid adversarial mouthpieces that don't even talk at one another but through one another. And they do so in the most sanctimonious of ways, diluting what and how they think in the form of talking-points that'd be better served on someone's back bumper. "All tears flow from the same source;" "what the world needs is jobs;" "the world is dying;" "there's way more satisfaction in building things." These are the kinds of grandiose statements you can expect from this movie, dispensed like oh so many socio-political McNuggets.

By the end of the evening, it becomes clear that director Miguel Arteta and screenwriter Mike White have a thematic endgame in mind. What results is a conclusion that no doubt feels forced and too little too late, though given the film's lack of plot, it should get brownie points for actually getting us there. But once we do get there, the shallow vanity, vitriolic banter and the ever present power dynamics all seem to be beside the point. Much like Blue State (2007), Fast Food Nation (2006) and other such movies, Beatriz at Dinner isn't really a movie so much as it is an overt statement that forgot the cameras were rolling.

Have we seriously gotten to the point where we have forgotten how to do satire? Given the high-concept, Beatriz at Dinner could have been a less sophomoric version of The Last Supper (1995) with flutters of Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) painted in for good measure. Instead we're given a film that's just not enough of anything. It's not aggressive enough, its not satirical enough, it's not nuanced enough - heck it's not even sanctimonious enough! It's sits there in a drunken fugue, angrily seething before ambling away in a worrisome state. If I were you, I wouldn't encourage movies like this by following it.

Nithing funny here but Selma Hayek is magnificent

[d_r_card · 17 July 2018]

Found nothing funny at all in this movie. The rich white people are shallow and selfish and make their money by ruining the planet and the lives impacted by their so-called 'developments'.

On the other hand, Beatriz is a highly relatable character bewildered by these people.

pulled short

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 2 May 2018]

Beatriz (Salma Hayek) is an environmentalist and new age masseuse. She goes into a gated community to work on rich client Kathy (Connie Britton). Kathy gushes over her due to her work with Kathy's cancer-strickened daughter. It's been a bad time for Beatriz. Someone had killed her beloved goat. After her car breaks down, Kathy invites her to the dinner party that night. Beatriz gets into a rolling argument with the main guest, rich arrogant land developer Doug Strutt (John Lithgow). Her family was devastated when a hotel developer moved into her Mexican village. She objects to his big game hunting and her callous treatment of the environment.

This is an interesting little indie of a committed leftist dropped in the middle of the privileged crowd. There is a good little conflict. Lithgow is unrepentant and I really like his "we're all dying" take on the world. I want more of that from writer Mike White. In the end, there is little more of 75 minutes of actual screen time. The movie is begging for more with Hayek and Lithgow. They could have had a free-wheeling debate. Instead, it goes for the cheap kill and forgets it with a dream reversal. This movie goes halfway done the road and then it pulls over to the side of the road before reaching its true destination.

Deeply Affecting

[MikeC19 · 7/10 · 21 October 2017]

The promotional material for this film made it seem like a comedy, or even a satire of clashing culture. It's actually very much a drama. This film is very well cast, and Salma Hayek does some *fantastic* acting in this. Her character is very much a fish out of water, in this situation. The world of the rich is shown in a way where you wonder how the rich can really be happy with the choices they've made. This film came at me like a punch to the gut. You really feel for Beatriz's character, and her love of animals is something you'll likely feel strongly about. It's a wonderful character study, yet at the film's finish, you still have you questions about characters and their choices, to some extent. This film affected me, and made me feel emotional. I would still recommend this movie, though.

This isn't the movie the trailer makes it out to be.

[epat · 3/10 · 14 November 2017]

I've recently noticed a disturbing trend in which movie trailers create what I think is a deliberately misleading impression of the movies they're supposed to illustrate. I've been sucked into watching several turkeys because their trailers were so enticing. The trailer for Beatriz at Dinner gives the impression of a modern-day drawing-room comedy: Plainspoken working-class Mexican woman (Salma Hayek) violates social norms at an upper-crust Anglo dinner party by taking a rich suave robber-baron (John Lithgow) bluntly to task for his nefarious societal & environmental depredations. Every comedic moment in the film is crowded into the trailer, making it seem like a much merrier movie than it turns out to be.

Naturally, the trailer doesn't show the irrelevant opening & closing scenes of a woman, presumably Beatriz, paddling a boat. Artistically cryptic, symbolically significant no doubt, but really... it comes across pretentious rather than portentous. That's a minor quibble, but to me it's a subtle warning sign.

The trailer doesn't show anything of Beatriz' brooding sorrow, despair or homicidal urges. Nor does it show her leaving long teary answering-machine messages for someone or other she evidently misses desperately — someone we soon come to suspect may no longer be alive, tho we'll never find out. So many things are hinted at in this film, but just left hanging & Hayek's powerful acting ends up wasted on a two-dimensional character who's never quite fleshed out.

Certainly nothing in the trailer leads you to expect the unhappy ending. Or is it?? Like so much of this film, that too is left to the viewer's interpretation. Given so little background or rationale, I'd say it's too shallow to be worth pondering. Movies that resort to ambiguous endings in hopes of pleasing — or maybe bamboozling? — everyone just end up falling between two chairs.

Maybe it's not as bad a film as I'm making it out to be, but it certainly isn't the film the trailer makes it out to be. And that was the film I actually wanted to see.

Guess who's coming to dinner?

[borromeot · 8/10 · 28 May 2018]

I'm a great fan of Miguel Arteta and Mike White's work. They travel a road that will take us to unusual places. I don't know if unusual is the right word because all of a sudden everything seems familiar, perhaps is the way Arteta and White got us there that is unusual. Opposite worlds sitting at the same table. Selma Hayek is wonderful and every though that crosses her heart and mind is perfectly visible to us. John Lithgow finds a new and disturbing face to his gallery of startling characters and Connie Britton is sublime as the hostess walking a thin line between empathy and something else. Wow! It really grabbed me and shook me. So, a highly recommended movie trying to survive in a sea of Avengers and remakes. Bravo!

Effectively biting drama, with a very frustrating conclusion

[BadRoosevelt · 7/10 · 21 July 2022]

A middle-aged Mexican massage therapist by chance gets to join a fancy dinner hosted by one of her wealthiest clients, in which the guest of honor is a smug business mogul, who looks down on almost anyone he crosses paths with. John Lithgow is appropriately off-putting in the role of a Trump-esque megalomaniac. Salma Hayek is startling eloquent as the ordinary woman who came from nothing.

The biggest issue with this film is that the female protagonist doesn't quite make sense in the totality of the story. One minute, she's Susan B. Anthony, next minute, she's Sylvia Plath. The film would have us believe that her despair and lack of exposure to this dark side of the world makes her a tragic figure, but in my opinion, it's an unconvincing character arc. A woman this strong does not bend when faced with the shallow and bleak soullessness of middle-aged white America. But that's what we're being led to believe. Recommended even with my disagreements.

Don't go see this movie. Just eat a $10 bill instead. You will still come out ahead.

[ladynakia · 1/10 · 5 July 2017]

I was so upset about this movie that I almost asked the theater for my money back.

The movie starts out promising, but heavy handed- Selma Hayek does a great job of portraying a two dimensional brown woman who eschews make-up, high heels and pretensions. Instead she's a 'healer' who loves her goats and thinks that the world needs help, but in this non-concrete, ineffective tree hugging hippie sort of way.

The other characters are similarly two-dimensional, rich tropes trying to have a good time chatting about nothing while Selma 'ruins the party' with her awkward conversation about heavy topics.

No one is relatable in this film.

The plot drones on and it's like watching a train-wreck of awkward personal interactions. Its mostly boring but uncomfortable, even when there are confrontations and 'sparks fly'.

Then after all of that, the ending is THE WORST. For whatever reason while the happy rich white people are lighting lanterns, she decides to go drown herself in the ocean which ends the film. This makes no sense and is just pathetic. Even my bad ideas are better than this, and I don't make them into movies.

This movie was so bad that I made an account with IMDb just so I could warn other people about how awful it is. Please don't go see this. Just have a drink instead.

Excellent performances, divisive ending

[2001ASOfan · 9/10 · 3 July 2017]

This mostly-quiet, purposefully slow-moving film is an enthralling display of expert acting and direction, a seemingly carefully-choreographed slow dance of opposing world views displayed beautifully. Salma Hayek's performance and character are literally mesmerizing at times, John Lithgow's character counters with a blithely world-weary, dismissive (but curiously jovial) attitude about everything around him from the get-go. As it turns out, however, both characters are resigned and world-weary, dealing with the awareness of that and the resulting inner sadness in very different ways, and the ending of the film will either seem perfectly, tragically logical or frustratingly wrong, probably depending on your own world view and where you are in your commitment or strength to continue trying to make it a better place--or your resignation that nothing can be done because you believe we're past the point of no return.

Careful whom you invite to dinner

[aldiboronti · 7/10 · 2 September 2017]

Excellent movie and so well acted, especially by Hayek and Lithgow. It's a film that completely subverts your expectations. A summary of the plot follows, please do not read if you don't want the ending spoiled

Salma Hayek plays a spiritual healer and masseuse, very much in tune with Nature and a lover of animals. (At the beginning her pet goat is killed by her neighbor, an act which weighs heavily on Hayek throughout the film. Visiting one of her wealthy clients her car breaks down after she has given her treatment and the client invites her to stay to dinner, a dinner which will be attended by Lithgow and his wife and another couple. Lithgow plays a ruthless entrepreneur and the dinner is to celebrate a new deal to build a hotel and shopping center. At dinner Hayek at first listens quietly but as the conversations turns to the many hotels Lithgow has built, including some in Mexico from where Hayek originates, she grows disturbed. She tells them that an American hotel was built in her native town and ended up with the eviction of the population and the death of her own father. It turns out that Lithgow had nothing to do with this but Hayek begins to see him as the embodiment of all evil, especially when he relates with pride how he killed a rhino on safari. Passing his cell round with the picture Hayek snaps and hurls the phone at him.

It is at this point that we realize Hayek's character is not what she seems and our sympathies switch. She is in fact a deeply troubled person capable of projecting all her past woes on anyone she meets whose views differ from hers. Lithgow now becomes the object of her murderous fantasies and she starts to believe if she kills him then the sufferings of the world will cease. Here the director has it both ways. We see Hayek sink a knife into Lithgow's neck killing him. In reality she drops the knife before she commits the act and leaves with the tow-truck, Lithgow never realizing how close he came to being the victim of a mentally-deranged woman. On the way home she asks the driver to pull over and we see her walk into the sea and submerge, killing herself rather than an innocent person.

I found this an immensely enjoyable film in which the director cleverly switches the sympathies of the audience from Hayek, portrayed almost as a saint at first, to Lithgow, who seemed the devil incarnate at the beginning. In short it's as if in the first half of the film we are seeing through the eyes of Hayek and in the second half we see the truth, that she is a very disturbed individual and Lithgow simply a businessman.

Biggest BS film ever

[vrolikamsterdam · 1/10 · 28 August 2017]

I am a healer, spiritual and vegetarian. Now, one that knows reiki and all the therapies she mentioned, knows the universal laws. She is breaking every single one of them. She is everything but a healer. So, having said that, it makes me kind of wonder what on earth the maker of this movie was thinking. One that believes in the afterlife doe not commit suicide, as they know the principles behind it. It's actually offending this movie. All the other characters were in sync with real life. The typical money and ego driven people that don't think of anything but themselves and superficial stuff. So we have Salma Hayek playing a crazy person pretending to be spiritual and a healer, yet does anything but, in her behavior. This film maker should have not touched a subject they know nothing about, it makes it silly and pathetic. So I cannot do anything else but to rate this movie a 1 out of 10. The poor man should change his job!

SPOILER---I wished the ending was switched.

[JohnK_Wright_V · 7/10 · 11 October 2017]

My wife and I waited so long to watch this and we both were so disappointed in the ending.

I am going to talk about the ending, so please do not read any more unless you have already watched the movie.

I wish that Director Miguel Arteta could release another DVD or Theatrical Release with an alternate ending.

The movie would have been better if Director Arteta would have just switched the "dream" sequence ending with the actual ending. I think it would have a better ending if John Lithgow's character turned to Beatriz and said, "What are you doing?" which prompts Beatriz to talk with him before leaving the house.

My suggestion is that keep this entire scene as the "dream" sequence.

When Lithgow's character confronts Beatriz as to what she is doing as she is in a trance, let Beatriz drop the knife but pick it up again and have the ending be the stabbing with everyone around her.

Have Beatriz calmly walk out of the house and get in the wrecker as her car is being towed.

I think it would make a lot more sense for her to look back at her life, what she just did, and then walk into the ocean.

I wish the movie would have shared more about her husband, her daughter, and whoever she was talking on the phone about the old days growing up in the mangroves in Mexico.

I can't wait for Beatriz at Dinner Part 2!

excuse me?

[ferguson-6 · 6/10 · 15 June 2017]

Greetings again from the darkness. The movie industry frequently sources societal worries, concerns, issues and hot topics. It's been less than 6 months, but here come the anti-Trump movies. Of course some will have clever disguises for their message, while others will slap us across the face. This re-teaming of The Good Girl director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White actually uses both approaches.

Salma Hayek stars as Beatriz, a masseuse and holistic healer, who comes awfully close to being an angel on earth … unless she's guzzled a bit too much white wine. Beatriz fights southern California traffic in her clunky VW as she rushes from her gig at the cancer center to Cathy's (Connie Britton) Orange County cliffside mansion. See, Cathy is hosting a dinner party for her husband's (David Warshofsky) business associates and she simply must have her massage prior to such a stressful event – after all, she did plan the menu. When Beatriz's car stalls in Cathy's driveway, she is invited to stay for the dinner party.

Things get awkward once the actual guests arrive. Alex (Jay Duplass) and his wife Shannon (Chloe Sevigny) are the young, entitled types so enticed by the fancy house and global traveling lifestyles on which they are on the brink. It should be noted that Mr. Duplass cleans up nicely and Ms. Sevigny spends much of the movie smiling – a look for which she's not normally associated. The real squirming occurs once Doug Strutt (John Lithgow) and his shallow third wife Jenna (Amy Landecker, "Transparent") arrive.

Beatriz and Strutt are polar opposites with contrasting lifestyles and character. She is a mystical presence with a deep connection to Mother Earth and all living beings. He is the Trump-like figure – charismatic, manipulating and laser-focused on the brass ring. She coddles her pet goat in her bedroom to protect it from a crazy neighbor, while he ignores the rare birds nesting on the valuable land he wants scraped for his newest development.

It's by no means a superhero movie, but Beatriz is presented as a Mexican-born working class (minimal make-up, functional clothing and shoes) Wonder Woman, while Strutt is the ultra villain out to destroy the planet, one rhinoceros at a time. She views him as "The Source" of Earth's pain, while he tries to laugh her off as a novelty act. It's Cathy and her husband who are most taken aback by the direct words of Beatriz, as they have considered her a "family friend" since she helped their daughter through a health scare. How dare she ruin their dinner party! There is a beautiful aerial shot of the Orange County mega-mansions, but most of the uncomfortable moments are derived through the ongoing duel of angelic Beatriz vs. the poisonous topics of politics and profit. There is no subtlety in the message, but having two talented actors go head to head, does make it more palatable.

Wow!

[kz917-1 · 6/10 · 18 October 2017]

This movie will make you uncomfortable and possibly squirm in your seat at moments. But in the end it will make you think.

The quote, "Bad things happen when good people do nothing." rings especially true in my mind right now.

Beatriz is portrayed by Salma Hayek and ends up staying for dinner at her client/friend's house after her car won't start.

Everyone else at the dinner is a member of the elite. They are rich and they flaunt it. Not the most scrupulous of people either.

The dinner that follows is one filled with tension, possible malice, revenge and who knows what else.

Worth the rental!

Extremely disappointed

[hazelnut-8299 · 1/10 · 21 August 2017]

*Spoilers ahead. Thought that this would be something new-age, or encourage more awareness when it comes to the earth and everything on it. All in all, it just wasted an hour and a half telling a story of someone mentally unstable whom in the end, killed herself. There was some political flavor to it as well, obviously. It's just unfortunate that Hollywood would even stoop this low.

the more you know

[lee_eisenberg · 10/10 · 26 September 2017]

There have been lots of stories of people at events where they don't fit in, but Miguel Arteta's "Beatriz at Dinner" still bears watching. In this case, the outcast is a massage therapist who has dinner with a rich family, witnessing the rich people talk about empty and sometimes evil things.

There's a hint of magical realism in the movie (the beginning and end). But most important is the movie's look at how development has affected people's livelihoods in the Third World, in particular Latin America. Of course, Beatriz finds the divide between rich and poor just as apparent in the US by having dinner at this house.

A fine movie in every way.

Not a Fan of Virginia Woolf

[tomazulob · 6/10 · 17 July 2017]

Selma Hayek and John Lithgow are treasures in the acting community. Ms. Hayek played a struggling middle-class woman with middle-class problems after dealing with issues when she was exceedingly poor. Mr. Lithgow shows incredible nuance in his performance as an ultra-rich developer. The two had me riveted. And then the ending occurred. . .

No matter what the political views (and wow, some hyper-political people absolutely did not like this film, as shown in some of the reviews on this site), the discussions at the dinner were spot on in describing what is going on in the world. However, Mike White, the screenwriter, seemed to be as frustrated as Beatriz and did not know how to end this satisfactorily; so, he resorted to a trite ending that would have made Virginia Woolf proud. I don't like the message he gave at the end. I was not looking for a happy ending--that would have been unrealistic--but there are other creative options he could have gone with.

Bottom line, Beatriz at Dinner reminded me of many of Stephen King screen adaptations: Great build-up, totally unsatisfying ending.

Cliché, heavy-handed, and Junior High directing skills

[arthousefilms-68-939717 · 1/10 · 27 July 2017]

This was an overly melodramatic cliché that was painful and embarrassing to watch. The film was so on-the-nose about every detail, that it was eye-rollingly bad. As if the cultural gap wasn't big enough between the billionaire and the poor plebeian, it was exaggerated 10-fold by the heavy-handed directing. Every single point of contrast seemed like it was made by a 13-year-old filmmaker with no understanding of nuance, cleverness, or inspiration. The characters were cardboard cutouts of stereotypes.

I wanted to love this film, but it was dreadful at every level. The reason Beatriz has to eat dinner with the family was laughable, the costume disparity... laughable... the sad-sack martyr of the protagonist... laughable.

Thought-provoking

[mdjpeace · 9/10 · 20 January 2022]

A well-written and poignant reflection on the modern world and all that's bad about it. This short (by usual standards) film says more in it's entirety than the majority of film makers will say in a whole career. A modest but accomplished achievement. Well done to all involved - more like this please!! It is art, not simply entertainment and what good film making is all about.

Thought provoking movie

[CrazyArty · 7/10 · 2 August 2021]

A dinner party where a beautiful, caring, unassuming healer (Salma Hayek) meets a horrible, wealthy, capitalist building mogul (the excellent John Lithgow).

Sounds like a dull premise for the movie but in fact it flows at a nice pace and is full of very interesting dialogue and is packed full of heart.

The contrast between the caring and the privileged, money-driven, personalities is powerful and viewers must reflect on what this says about the world today, and what we truly value in it.

Very thought-provoking stuff.

Salma is super authentic in her role.

Spirituality taken to the level of mental illness

[Irie212 · 3/10 · 20 June 2017]

Beatriz (Salma Hayek) is a Mexican-born physical therapist at a medical treatment center in Los Angeles. She also has private clients, including the socialite in whose driveway her aging Volkswagen breaks down. So she stays to dinner, the 7th guest at a table of plutocrats.

So the next thing to say is, I get it. It's 2017, and we're watching a movie about a female immigrant at a table of Donald Trumps' peers. That might make for a fine satire or allegory, which, I think, was the intent. In the hands of Miguel Aterta, it is not the result.

Beatriz keeps dogs and goats in the city, to the understandable annoyance of her neighbor, whom she accuses of killing one of the goats. Her dashboard has both a Buddha and a crucifix. When she lists her professional healing skills, I began to wonder if she was delusional because she reels off a substantial list that includes massage, Reiki, and Rolfing. The script presents her as an exquisitely sensitive individual, but sensitivity does not inform her actions toward the people she meets. If there's one word for her, it's judgmental. If you want another, humorless.

She has little self-control, not with drinking, nor even with managing basic courtesy when you're a guest in someone's home. She controls her emotions to the extent that she only imagines murdering the real estate mogul (John Lithgow), but not enough to prevent her own suicide.

Yes, like a 21st century Norman Maine, she walks drunkenly into the Pacific Ocean at the end. One dinner with six wealthy white Americans sends her over the edge. And those six people are thinly drawn as stereotypes of plutocrats. There is not an ounce of fresh observation; only Lithgow's performance lifts him above his simplistic character. Yet one evening with land barons drives Beatriz to commit suicide? That's not mental health. Nor is it sympathetic. When she wades into the Pacific to drown, I was left wondering who would take care of her abandoned dogs and the remaining goat, because I cared a good deal more about them than about her. And P. S., she apparently didn't give her pets a second thought either.

Beatriz is meant to be seen as enlightened, but she is darkness personified. She has one speech in which she says it is easy to create by destroying, but the real work is to heal or fix the things that are being destroyed. That is a worthy theme, but Beatriz is hardly admirable flag-bearer for it. Contrary to the way I believe the filmmakers wanted the audience to respond, I actually began to have some sympathy for-- or anyway, identify with-- the oligarchs who had to contend with the intransigent, and apparently mentally disturbed, woman in their midst.

So tense!!

[calicut110 · 7/10 · 17 November 2021]

I was not expecting this. But was a very tense dark comedy. Lots of moments I was in the edge of my seat, I can't explain it. The director does such a good job of keeping an unsettling feeling at all times. The acting was great. I would recommend it.