Boil­ing Point

The pro­fes­sion­al kitchen should lend itself well to the sort of sweat-induc­ing fre­neti­cism pop­u­larised by the Safdie broth­ers, at least judg­ing by TV docu­soap Kitchen Night­mares. So as to prove such a the­sis, enter Philip Barantini’s sec­ond fea­ture, Boil­ing Point: shot in what appears to be a sin­gle take (yep, lit­er­al­ly an uncut gem) across a Dal­ston restaurant’s evening ser­vice, here’s one to make you sweat more than a hard-pressed maître d’.

Enter a hag­gard Stephen Gra­ham, whose char­ac­ter, Andy, is once again hav­ing a tor­rid time of it (is there any­one bet­ter, in the cur­rent moment, at play­ing the under the cosh every­man). As head chef, he has the sort of sand­pa­pery stub­ble that sign­posts las­si­tude, his hands cracked, no doubt stink­ing of meat and salt. Arriv­ing at work, he grum­bles apolo­gies down the phone to his son, once again hav­ing missed his swim meet.

More shit accu­mu­lates from here­in. Before ser­vice, an overzeal­ous inspec­tor (Thomas Coombes who, in the most com­pli­men­ta­ry of terms, you’d love to slap the spit out of) knocks the restaurant’s health and safe­ty rat­ing down from a five to a three; a casu­al­ly racist meat­head gets off to abus­ing one of the Black wait­ers; in a moment of strik­ing sen­si­tiv­i­ty, a young lad on the pas­try sec­tion inad­ver­tent­ly reveals his self-harm scars; and with lit­tle warn­ing, in waltzes celebri­ty chef Alas­tair Skye (Jason Fle­myng) with food crit­ic Sara South­worth (Lour­des Faberes) in tow.

Each table, it seems, is its own var­i­ous­ly con­trived lit­tle bomb. It’s less a case of wait­ing to see which one blows first, more which will take out the entire neighbourhood.

For­mal­ly, the film sel­dom takes its foot off the gas. Matthew Lewis’ hand­held cam­era is imbued with its own errat­ic, ever-height­en­ing cadence. He dips and darts around the tables and cook­ing sta­tions like a pesky mos­qui­to. We’re giv­en the occa­sion­al moment or two to wring out our shirts, but like a kitchen porter with ever-pil­ing crock­ery to put through the wash, reprieves are few and far between.

Andy is our main point of orbit, but it’s to Barantini’s cred­it that we’re giv­en good time with the broad­er ensem­ble, most of whom have their own nig­gles and woes. Aside from Gra­ham, as ter­rif­ic as he ever is, Vignette Robin­son stands out as Car­ly, Andy’s bril­liant but belea­guered sec­ond-in-com­mand on the verge of jump­ing ship. In one of the film’s many epony­mous moments of explo­sive steam-whistling, she gives her incom­pe­tent man­ag­er the Alex Fer­gu­son hairdry­er treat­ment: a mag­mic tor­rent of rage that spills from the gut and, once the lid is up, feels impos­si­ble to stop.

With such a short run­time and gar­gan­tu­an pile of griev­ances, it must be said, ade­quate res­o­lu­tion feels increas­ing­ly fleet­ing: it’s all kept on heat until the last, with lots of small cli­mac­tic moments lead­ing to a strained crescen­do, and a dénoue­ment that doesn’t quite land. You get the sense, van­ish­ing­ly rare so it is, that this could’ve done with more min­utes. But, to para­phrase the smarmy Skye, it’s 95 per cent of the way there; I’ve tast­ed far, far worse.