BEATRIZ AT DINNER

This movie could have been so good. Great casting, great subject, great opportunity to do some deep consciousness raising (as we used to say) about the state of the country and the world. But...it finally fails, for my taste, because it chickens out, with an ending that was revolutionary when Kate Chopin wrote it for her novel THE AWAKENING at the end of the 19th Century, but is a cop out in 2017.

What could have been an inspiring call to action, or at least an exposing of the hypocrisy of the elite (not like we haven't heard that before) instead ends up not just giving up but totally despondent. Salma Hayek does a terrific job in the leading role (as does everyone else) but what she's given to work with in some scenes is so disjointed and/or weirdly patronizing (for a film supposedly attacking the Trumpian style patriarchy with John Lithgow brilliantly, as always, portraying the Trumpian) I ended up not only leaving the theater frustrated and angry and disappointed, but once again wishing that movies about women be written and directed by women.

This incredibly serious subject that focuses on not just a woman but an immigrant woman, is written by a white male most famous for comedies. I guess I admire his good intentions, but maybe they would have been better expressed by handing the idea over to a woman writer who hopefully would have seen the sexism of the ending, which insults the character Hayek has so diligently done her best to represent.

I don't know, go see it yourself and tell me what you think.