BEATRIZ AT DINNER. Salma Hayek is a Mexican immigrant massage therapist and healer, who because her car dies while making a house call at the home of a wealthy client in Newport Beach, is invited to stay for a dinner party. The party is to celebrate closing a real estate deal for a hotel resort property.
The film explores the social dynamics of people with radically different ethnic backgrounds, social status, wealth, and therefore power. “Where are you really from? And did you come here legally?” That’s the surface of the dinner conversation, but Beatriz has her own agenda, sparked by one of the other guests, a super rich real estate mogul, played by John Lithgow.
It is more like a play in that the dialogue, rather than the action, carries the story. I enjoyed it, but it’s not for everyone. A sense of melancholy pervades the film; so don’t see it on a day you prefer to feel light and breezy.
