Imagine that bravura restaurant tracking shot from Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas stretched to 94 seamless minutes and you get some sense of Boiling Point, director Philip Barantini’s gripping, propulsive, single-take drama set in a busy London eaterie. The biggest name in a juicy ensemble cast, Stephen Graham stars as a troubled chef whose night begins badly and only gets worse. Having previously acted alongside Barantini in the TV miniseries Band of Brothers, Graham went on to star in the actor-turned-director’s acclaimed 2019 short which became the blueprint for this, his assured second feature.
Drawing on his own youthful experiences working in restaurant kitchens, Barantini shot Boiling Point on location at a friend’s dining establishment in the trendy Dalston district of East London. He makes the job look like a hellish horror story of abusive bosses, pressure-cooker conditions, terrifying health risks, rude customers and fragile co-workers constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Filmed in one extended shot with no apparent digital cheating, this is an emotionally raw, technically dazzling drama, but not a great advert for working in the high-end hospitality business. Following its world premiere in Karlovy Vary in August, this sizzling UK production screens on home turf at London Film Festival this week.
Hard-drinking head chef Andy (Graham) is having a bad day, clearly the latest of many. We first meet him on a city street, running late for work, locked in desperate phone negotiations with his estranged wife and son. As he arrives to host the evening shift on a busy pre-Christmas night at his upscale London restaurant, he runs into a snap inspection by a local borough hygiene inspector (Thomas Coombes), who has just downgraded the establishment by two crucial stars for sloppy standards. Andy takes the news like a punch in the face, raging against his multicultural kitchen team, looking to blame anyone but himself.
But disapproving officials are the least of Andy’s worries. His fractious staff are in mutiny. His strong-willed sous-chef Carly (Vinette Robinson) is a supportive ally, but sick of covering for him, and about to jump ship to another job. Meanwhile his brash but brittle boss Beth (Alice Feetham) cares more about publicity than treating workers with respect. As tempers flare backstage, the dining tables are filling up with bad-news customers including racist bullies, boorish social-media “influencers” and a snarky celebrity chef (Jason Flemyng) who arrives unannounced with a bitchy food critic (Lourdes Faberes) in tow. After greeting his former mentor with thinly veiled suspicion, Andy returns to simmering in the kitchen, where ingredients shortages and internal tensions are primed to explode. He’s got 99 problems and a brioche is just one.
Superbly choreographed, blocked and filmed by Barantini and his nimble cinematographer Matthew Lewis, Boiling Point quickly transcends its gimmicky one-shot concept as form becomes function. Scarcely a second of screen time is wasted despite the free-flowing, roving-camera approach. Unlike other confected single-take dramas such as Rope (1948), Birdman (2014) or 1917 (2019), this low-budget feature was reportedly filmed straight through, with no obvious cuts or dissolves. That said, editor Alex Fountain has a credit, so some minor tweaking has presumably taken place. In any case, the restlessly kinetic camerawork is executed with such impressively unobtrusive finesse, it almost excuses some of the clumsy melodramatic twists that shape the film’s second half, from heavily foreshadowed medical emergencies to shock financial revelations.
Boiling Point plays clever tricks with time. Though it initially unfolds with what feels like real-time naturalism, the adrenaline-pumped tempo becomes more accelerated and condensed for heightened dramatic intensity. In places it feels like witnessing a live-action immersive theatre production, complete with slightly mannered, semi-improvised dialogue and sweaty, anxious, up-close performances. Credit is due to a strong ensemble cast for anchoring these more soapy elements in gritty social-realist authenticity. As ever, Graham is a reliably riveting presence, his face a glowering road map of wounded pride, radiating thunderous inner rage like a young Gene Hackman. He also relishes a rare chance to use his native Liverpool accent. But Robinson deserves maximum kudos too, giving as good as she gets against a heavyweight screen sparring partner.
In vintage Robert Altman style, Barantini places multiple characters in their own discrete but overlapping mini-dramas. Sadly he does not have the range or runtime to follow each subplot to a satisfying resolution, leaving too many threads dangling as the screenplay’s latter half increasingly relies on overcooked caricature and engineered crisis. After all, the chances of all these explosive issues erupting across a single 90-minute restaurant shift are pretty slender, even on a busy night. These are not major flaws, but they limit the dramatic impact of Boiling Point, making it more of a spectacular plate-spinning act than an emotionally resonant narrative. That said, those are some pretty fine plates.
Director: Philip Barantini
Screenplay: James Cummings, Philip Barantini
Cast: Stephen Graham, Vinette Robinson, Jason Flemyng, Ray Panthaki, Hannah Walters, Malachi Kirby, Alice Feetham, Izuka Hoyle, Lourdes Faberes, Thomas Coombes, Gary Lamont, Lauryn Ajufo, Daniel Larkai
Producers: Bart Ruspoli, Hester Ruoff?
Cinematography: Matthew Lewis
Editing: Alex Fountain?
Production companies: Ascendant Films (UK), Burton Fox Films? (UK)
World sales: Charades, Paris
Venue: London Flm Festival (Thrill section)
In English
94 minutes
