If you read the late Anthony Bourdain, you would gather that the cooking areas in restaurants are toxic environments. Nose to Tail gives us that world perhaps only slightly exaggerated.
Daniel (Aaron Abrams) oozes toxic. Daniel has toxic reactions to everything and everyone. Chloe (Lara Jean Chorostecki), Daniel’s part-time girlfriend/front of the house, staggers back and forth between confronting him and holding back.
Nose to Tail takes place over about 24 hours where several elements fall into place to make Daniel as angry and toxic as he has been. He is worried about the potential investors coming by the restaurant on a day where things slowly go wrong around him. How far will Daniel go with his anger and toxicity.
Daniel is afraid of technology aka blogs as well as food trucks. He considered himself old-school but not in the ways of presenting food with his ultra-tiny portions. The restaurant is full every night yet the place is losing money. The restaurant has been around for 10 years, longer than a lot of restaurants, yet no one would put up with his crap for longer than 6 weeks.
CanadianCrossing.com film reviews
CanadianCrossing.com film coverage
Abrams does well by Daniel, giving him a tiny bit of humanity in what is otherwise a monster. The only person who Daniel is nice to is his sommelier Steven (Salvatore Antonio). Daniel treats Chloe as badly as any of his employees, which seems unlikely given they are supposedly in a relationship.
Daniel can't even hold back the anger in trying to get a high school friend (Ennis Esmer) to invest in his restaurant.
Chorostecki, whom we loved in X Company, holds her own, the diplomatic to the jackass who gives as well as she receives.
Jesse Zigelstein, as writer/director in his debut, gives us an intimate setting for the film. The film is mostly inside a restaurant, in the back of the restaurant, and then briefly onto College Street in Toronto to the food truck across the street. The film is not well-lit but in a good way. You are in tight corners with intimacy with a culinary monster, good and bad.
The script is tight and flows like someone who has worked in restaurants. Daniel's dressing down of the servers on how to interpret the menu deserves simultaneous applause and disgust.
Zigelstein has very small parts for most in the film: exceptions are Keith (Brandon McKnight), the sous chef who smartly leaves for a much better offer, and Angela (Genevieve Kang), who Chloe insists Daniel utilise to replace Keith.
You do wonder how people stay with someone that bad for a long time. Fortunately for the audience, they only have to know Daniel for around 80 minutes.
The film is intense and intimate. If you are a highly sensitive person, you might want to skip this film. Otherwise, watch it to see someone worse than you (hopefully).
Nose to Tail is available on Crave in Canada.
video credit: YouTube/1091 Pictures
photo credit: Nose to Tail film
Comments