The kitchen is slammed. The customers are assholes. Ingredients are in short supply. A critic is here unannounced. Table 13 has an allergy. Dishes are sent back. But the tickets keep coming. More orders. More wine. More demands. More, more, more.
So you keep giving. You give and you give until there isn’t much of you left. You’ve put everything you have into the restaurant, so much so that the other pieces of your life like love, family, and purpose—those pieces that make you human—are gone. And in the end, you are just a boiled and bloodied machine-of-a-body that has collapsed in on itself.
Boiling Point captures the essence and intensity of restaurants in a brilliant way: the entire film is one take. It’s technically executed to perfection. Ninety minutes of chaos, straight through. And this isn’t just done for show. It invokes this sense of dread, this feeling of facing an unrelenting opponent as these characters take on problem after problem, and we the audience can’t stop for a single second to look away. The only substantial “break” comes when a dishwasher goes out the back to dump the garbage—but we still can’t help but worry about what’s going on back in the restaurant. Because we know that it doesn’t stop. The second you look away, something can go wrong.
We follow Andy for most of the night as he struggles to balance two disparate parts of himself. There’s his role as Head Chef and his role as Father/Husband. Professional and personal. It’s easy to tell that Andy was once a very promising chef and a good leader for his staff. But it took too much from him. So much so that he lost his wife, and his own son questions whether or not his father loves him. Andy found himself with no other choice but to give in to the industry and let himself be picked apart. He let his personal relationships wither away. Now he’s stuck in this negative feedback loop: the more he gives up to better the restaurant, the worse he becomes as a chef, and the worse he becomes as a chef, the more he has to give up to better the restaurant. And the cycle continues. The pressure increases. Andy is further broken down.
Andy’s state of disarray is reflected in the rest of his staff. Without his sufficient leadership, they are in conflict with each other, the customers, and him. We spend a little bit of time on each of these other characters, and the sharp writing makes the restaurant feel like a real, lived-in place. As if this is just another long night in an endless mass of nights just like it, and we’re thrown into the kitchen alongside everyone else. In a way, we’re fending for ourselves—just like these workers—as we decipher information and gather details and keep up with them. I found myself trying to remember whether or not a task was finished. It was almost like I was on the clock too.
Sous-chef Carly, the next in command, is one of the only people who can challenge Andy. It’s clear that she has his respect and he wants her by his side no matter what. She’s been the one to shoulder Andy’s load because of his recent dysfunction, and many times it seems as if she’s the one in charge of him. It’s interesting to see how when Andy is off tending to his hotshot chef friend and a food critic, that way in the back of the restaurant, Carly is still working away. It’s little moments like this where the one-take greatly enhances the characterization. Because while we’re watching Andy, the director is careful to block Carly in our line of sight. As Andy’s conversation drags on longer, we can’t help but worry about Carly all alone on expo, with tickets still coming in.
Andy’s conversation with his hotshot friend ends up flipping the narrative. We learn that Andy has borrowed $200,000 from him for this restaurant, and the friend desperately needs it back. Of course, Andy doesn’t have the money (the restaurant doesn’t even have enough to pay Carly a fair salary), and he returns to the chaos of the kitchen with this problem at the front of his mind. Before he can even get back to work, everything goes to shit. That allergy on Table 13? Yes, the one that has been in the back of everyone’s minds for nearly an hour, but dozens of other pressing issues got in the way of. Well, that customer is going into anaphylactic shock. A direct result of Andy not prepping enough the night before and sending out a replacement dressing with walnut oil in it.
At the beginning of the film, the restaurant’s cracks were hard to see. But they were there. Each passing moment dealt another blow to its foundation, and now as an ambulance takes off with a customer, the place implodes. Cooks are crying, screaming, throwing punches. Chef Carly drills into Andy, and he, facing enormous debt and a potentially career-ending mistake, rightfully takes the blame for everything.
All he can do is retreat into his office and numb his crumbling reality with drugs and alcohol. The professional piece of himself is all but gone, and all he has left to cling to is his family. In a teary phone call with his ex-wife, he vows to stop using and become better. He pleads with her to tell their son that he loves him. Then he throws away his cocaine, pours out his vodka.
But the effort is futile. It isn’t enough to right all the wrongs and avoid tragedy. Everything has finally caught up to Andy, and this story, so grounded in reality, will not be solved with mere apologies and proclamations of love. Andy’s physical and spiritual imbalance, his flaws and inability to overcome them, have led him to this point: he collapses to the floor. The take (and the film) finally ends as he goes unconscious.
The chaotic kitchen/restaurant seems to be a blossoming genre in and of itself. This film got a sequel in the form of a mini series, which I’m very much looking forward to watching. Boiling Point’s single-night snapshot and strong characters make a good setup for a much larger and more complex picture. And with The Bear Season 3 inching closer and already being renewed for Season 4, I think people’s love for food and Gordon Ramsay-esque chaos has primed the culture for more of these stories. It’s like a sports drama, where the characters’ internal battle is manifested into the physical world around them. The stakes are sky-high because they’re so invested in the restaurant and they sacrifice so much for it. It really makes for a great way to explore characters. To think about what other film and TV might come out of this trend is exciting.
00Cinema 