A24 Releases “Tony,” a Bourdain Biopic That Rejects Reverence

A24 is releasing “Tony” on Friday, a new film about Anthony Bourdain that takes an unusual approach to a public figure who has long been treated with near-reverence in food media. Instead of following the chef, writer and television host at the height of his fame, the movie focuses on one summer in his youth, when he was still forming the habits, appetites and contradictions that would later define him.

The film is directed by Matt Johnson and stars Dominic Sessa as the young Bourdain. Antonio Banderas, Emilia Jones, Leo Woodall and Dagmara Domińczyk round out the main cast. The story is set largely in Provincetown, Mass., and draws on a period Bourdain later described in harsh terms in his memoir “Kitchen Confidential,” where he wrote that he had been “a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout.”

That self-assessment sets the tone for a film that does not try to make Bourdain more polished or more heroic than he claimed to be. The plot follows him after he applies for a writing fellowship at Vassar and tells relatives and friends that he has been accepted, when in fact he has not. After developing a fixation on an old acquaintance he meets in a bar, he steals money from his father, travels to Provincetown and tries to insert himself into her life.

Once there, the story places him inside the kitchen world that would later become central to his identity. After a drunken confrontation at a restaurant, where oysters and alcohol are already shown as recurring parts of his life, he is thrown out and left stranded. He then talks his way into a dishwashing job at the same restaurant in exchange for a place to sleep, beginning a stretch of work, deceit and self-invention that the film presents as a rough origin story.

The restaurant becomes the movie’s main workplace and moral testing ground. Banderas plays the chef who employs him, a figure of discipline and restraint in contrast with the chaos around him. Jones plays Nancy, the woman Bourdain pursues and who later became his first wife in real life. Woodall plays a more reckless influence who pulls him deeper into the kind of behavior Bourdain would later describe as destructive. Domińczyk appears briefly as Bourdain’s mother, who is portrayed as someone who sees through him and expects more.

The choice to stay in this early chapter matters because Bourdain’s public image has often been tied to the confidence and authority of his later career. He became one of the most recognizable voices in modern food culture through “Kitchen Confidential” and television programs that treated meals as a way into politics, class, migration and place. He was admired not only by chefs and restaurant workers but also by many people in wine, beer and spirits, because his work helped normalize the idea that food and drink stories could be serious cultural reporting rather than lifestyle decoration.

That makes “Tony” relevant beyond film audiences. Even though the movie is not built around wine or spirits, it returns to the dining rooms, bars and back-of-house spaces that shaped Bourdain before television and celebrity. For the beverage business, that setting may renew attention to the broader hospitality world that Bourdain helped bring into the mainstream, including oyster bars, drinking culture and the messy relationship between appetite, ambition and self-destruction that has long shadowed restaurant life.

The film also arrives at a time when Bourdain’s legacy remains active in publishing, streaming and culinary tourism. He died by suicide in 2018, but his influence has not faded. Restaurant workers still cite him as someone who made kitchen labor visible to people outside the industry. Travelers still visit cities with his programs in mind. Bartenders and sommeliers often point to the way he approached a meal as a social act, not a status exercise. A movie that turns back to his youth is likely to reopen debate about what parts of that legacy deserve emphasis: the craft, the honesty, the damage or the myth.

By concentrating on Bourdain before success, “Tony” avoids the usual rise-and-triumph structure of biographical films. It is less interested in achievement than in formation. The young man at the center of the movie lies easily, behaves selfishly and hurts people around him. The film’s basic argument, as described in early reactions, is that understanding Bourdain means accepting those traits as part of the story rather than editing them out to preserve a cleaner icon.

That approach places pressure on Sessa, who has to play a figure audiences already know well and often remember fondly. The role requires him to capture Bourdain before the familiar voice, confidence and television persona were fully in place. The supporting cast helps frame that transition: the stern chef, the romantic interest, the friend who pulls him off course, the parent who refuses to excuse him. Together they give the film the structure of an origin story, but not a celebratory one.

For A24, the release adds another recognizable name to a studio slate that often favors character-driven films over conventional prestige biography. For the restaurant world, it puts Bourdain back at the center of public conversation in a way that may feel both familiar and uncomfortable. He remains one of the few food figures whose life can support a movie that reaches beyond kitchens into larger questions about masculinity, addiction, performance and work.

“Tony” opens with a version of Bourdain that is not yet famous, not yet wise and not yet in control. Its Provincetown summer is built around dishwashing shifts, lies, oysters, drinking and the unstable search for a self that could later be sold to the public as a voice of truth. The movie begins its theatrical run Friday through A24.