Philip Barantini (2021)

As you start to watch a feature-length film that you know will be one continuous shot, you’re impatient also to know what justifies the single take.  Is it somehow integral to the film’s themes?  Is it a technical feat that’s also a showoff gimmick?   In Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), the ‘oner’ contrived by Alejandro González Iñárritu and DP Emmanuel Lubezki does express something of the main character’s claustrophobia.  Riggan Thomson is a man trapped in his own past – that is, in other people’s fixed ideas of who he used to be and must remain.  But there are scenes that don’t involve Riggan, which gives the game away – as does the film’s irritating fancy title.  Birdman (etc) is up itself, something that Philip Barantini’s one-shot Boiling Point certainly isn’t.  In this case, both the title and the continuous shot reflect the protagonist’s state of mind.  Even before Andy Jones gets to the up-market London restaurant where he’s head chef and where all the remaining action in this low-budget British drama will take place, Boiling Point has signalled the turmoil in his personal life, hinted that it may be affecting his professional one, and drawn the viewer in.  The film barely pauses to draw breath for the rest of its ninety-two minutes.  The same goes for the audience, and Matthew Lewis’s unyielding camerawork has a lot to do with that.

Scuttling along the dark street outside, Andy (Stephen Graham) is on his phone – apologising for missing an event at his son’s school, protesting that he’s already late for work, where a busy night is beginning:  it’s the Friday before Christmas (evidently in the pre-Covid era).  Andy enters the kitchen midway through an environmental health inspection by the ironically named Mr Lovejoy (Thomas Coombes).  He downgrades the place’s rating, mainly because of Andy’s ropy record-keeping.  Snatches of conversation with colleagues confirm what that opening phone exchange implied – that Andy’s marriage has recently collapsed.  We can guess that the plastic bottle he keeps drinking from, as service gets underway, doesn’t always contain pure water.  Barantini and James Cummings, who shares with him the screenplay credit, efficiently outline other characters, concocting a brew of nervous tensions within Andy’s team.  Long-suffering assistant chef Carly (Vinette Robinson) has been loyal but is threatening to go elsewhere if the pay rise Andy’s promised doesn’t materialise.  Her colleague Freeman (Ray Panthaki), tired of holding the fort for Andy, is reaching the end of his tether.  When motherly pastry chef Emily (Hannah Walters) insists that her talented, nervy junior (Stephen McMillan) literally roll up his sleeves to keep them out of food being prepared, his exposed forearms reveal signs of self-harming; Emily chokes back sobs as she hugs and reassures him.  The restaurant is overbooked for the evening, which intensifies the hectic kitchen activity.  As in Birdman, the protagonist isn’t in every scene but the pressure-cooker environment and how stressed others are, articulate naturally with Andy’s feelings so the single take doesn’t feel like a cheat, as it does in Iñárritu’s film.  Sustaining the continuous shot becomes strained only when kitchen dogsbody Jake (Daniel Larkai) slopes out of the restaurant to the bins at the back and an alleyway assignation that will deliver his next fix.

The narrative’s lurching-from-crisis-to-crisis momentum entails some confusions; it did for this viewer anyway.  The kitchen is in such chaos from the start, and some health and safety issues picked up by Lovejoy are so basic, that it takes a while to realise that the restaurant’s meant to be high end.  (Boiling Point was shot in Jones & Sons, a Dalston restaurant owned by Philip Barantini’s friend, Andy Jones, who presumably shares only his name with Stephen Graham’s character.)  When he’s not saying sorry to people, Andy is usually swearing at them:  there’s a gripping running battle with bossy but clueless Beth (Alice Feetham), who’s in charge of front of house and scolds Andy non-stop.  The kitchen crew reckons Beth owes her position to her (unseen) father, who needs to approve Carly’s pay increase.  I was surprised when it turned out that Andy part owns the restaurant; Beth’s father is presumably his business partner but this is never clear.  It’s an effective touch, though, that an angry, exasperated outburst not from Andy but from Carly, usually the peacemaker in the kitchen, reduces Beth to tears.  This triggers a phone call in which she tells her father what Andy and co already knew and have told Beth – that she’s not up to the job.

Boiling Point began life as a short, released to acclaim in 2019.  That twenty-two-minute version was also directed by Barantini, written by him and Cummings, had Graham in the main role and some of the same actors in supporting parts.  A key character introduced in the longer film (according to IMDb details), and who helps drive the plot to its bleak climax, is Alistair Skye (Jason Flemyng), a TV celebrity chef for whom Andy once worked.  As soon as he learns that Alistair has booked a table, Andy is dismayed, and not just because his ex-boss’s dinner companion will be feared food critic Sara Southworth (Lourdes Faberes).  It transpires that Alistair loaned Andy £200,000 to set up the restaurant, and now wants and, despite his apparent success, needs the money back.  The film has an extra edge for anyone (like me) addicted to television cooking competitions.  Boiling Point reinterprets the contestants’ mantra that you-get-an-incredible-buzz-doing-service in a restaurant kitchen.  It’s also quite funny to wonder if Alistair Skye, who emerges as the villain of the piece, is based on particular real-life star chefs.  Even before proposing an outrageous way to deal with the pivotal crisis of the evening (see below), Alistair has proved himself a master of the passive-aggressive put-down.  He smilingly informs Andy that ‘I recognise all these dishes!’  He congratulates his protégé on his brilliant cooking:  ‘It’s so nearly there …could I just get a little ramekin dish with some za’atar?’

Whether or not they’re based on diners that Barantini, Cummings and/or the real Andy Jones have had to endure, the restaurant clientele is alarmingly credible.  Loadsamoney patriarch Kevin (Rob Parker) orders ‘your most expensive bottle of wine’; bubbly blonde, white waitress Robyn (Áine Rose Daly) takes the order; when Black waitress Andrea (Lauryn Ajufo) serves it, Kevin looks askance and soon goes into racist overdrive.  A group of young male social-media influencers, who don’t like the look of the poncy menu, ask for steak and chips instead.  Andrea politely says no; desperately ingratiating Beth overrules her; the under-the-cosh kitchen staff is incandescent.  On table 13, unlucky for some, Frank (Robbie O’Neill) is planning to propose to Mary (Rosa Escoda) but their romantic evening doesn’t turn out well.  Although they give notice of Mary’s nut allergy, walnut oil finds its way into the garnish on her food, she goes into anaphylactic shock and an ambulance is called.  Andy angrily rejects Alistair’s idea of laying the blame on Carly but that’s not enough to stop mayhem in the kitchen.  Andy finally spirals out of control.  He shuts himself away, drinks some more, snorts cocaine and, in a tearful call to his estranged wife, begs her to tell their son that he loves him, and promises to go into rehab.  He then collapses.  The film ends with him unconscious (or worse) and another 999 call.

As beleaguered Andy, that fretful pocket dynamo Stephen Graham is the emotional heart and motor of Boiling Point.  Once again, Graham is outstanding but he never stands out in the wrong way.  He also looks perfectly at home working in a kitchen – the same goes for the other actors concerned.  It’s important to stress the strength in depth of this cast (which includes, as well as those already mentioned, Izuka Hoyle, Malachi Kirby, Gary Lamont and Taz Skylar) – and that the temptation to overplay ridiculous or hateful figures is consistently resisted (notably by Thomas Coombes and Rob Parker).  If there’s rather too much of Alistair Skye this isn’t the fault of Jason Flemyng; it’s because Barantini and Cummings have had a ball thinking up abominable things for Alistair to say.

As Boiling Point goes on, Philip Barantini faces the usual dilemma of a director who has realised a thoroughly believable situation in quasi-documentary style, and orchestrated flawless naturalistic acting to match.  How does he deliver dramatic shaping and a big finish within the lifelike context he has created, without seeming to force things?  (This may also be a particular occupational hazard for a film-maker converting a short into a feature.)  On paper, the gruelling climax here might seem too much; thanks to the high energy level, it feels organic to the piece.  Barantini, whose second feature this is (after Villain (2020)), does an excellent job of setting and detailing the scene.  He makes the explosion that has to come inevitable rather than predictable.  Race and gender issues throughout the restaurant register strongly without being overstressed.  The propulsive storytelling makes it easy to overlook how skilfully Barantini makes the action continuous yet not quite in real time.  Boiling Point is a grim film.  In more ways than one, it’s an exciting one, too.

2 February 2022