It was November the 9th, 2016 when I decided to go see a movie after work to distract from the  US election results. I saw Arrival, the Amy Adams science fiction drama about several large, ominous entities that suddenly appear across the globe. The humans must learn to understand and live with these entities, lest we descend into global chaos. Needless to say, it was not as diverting from the news cycle as I had anticipated.

Since Donald Trump won the presidency, it seems like most movies can be seen through a prism of his… unique brand of politics. Every power-hungry, war-monger villain is a Trump stand-in, and every hero is the rebellion we all want to be and hope to find. But all of that is accidental. Movies like Wonder Woman, War for the Planet of the Apes, or even Get Out weren’t made to overtly reference trump. They and many others were long in production before any of this real-world drama unfolded.

A Film Made For The Trump Era

Which is where Beatriz at Dinner comes in. Promoted as “the first great film of the Trump era”, it is certainly the first film to come along that can’t simply be read as anti-Trump, but is directly inspired by him and antagonistic towards the man in no uncertain terms. After all, it’s not an accident that director Miguel Arteta’s film features an ageing billionaire hotel owner on his third marriage who hunts rhinos for fun, doesn’t care about the environment and gets sued every other week.

Beatriz (Salma Hayek) is a new age healer whose car breaks down inside a gated community after a massage session with a wealthy client, Cathy (Connie Britton). Beatriz is then invited to join a dinner party celebrating Cathy’s husband’s new land development. While at first she follows the wives who gossip about a Hollywood star’s leaked nude photos, she soon her sets sights on the wealthy Doug Strutt (a grotesquely smarmy John Lithgow), who plies her with questions about her immigration status, jokes that she could be a stripper and confuses her for one of the house staff.

The screenplay by Mike White is spurred on by the same concerns that inspired his criminally under-appreciated HBO series Enlightened, which starred Laura Dern as an avenging whistle-blower who takes down her environmentally unfriendly corporation from the inside. In 2017’s harsh light of day, Enlightened stands as perhaps the most essential comedy of the last decade, a brutal yet often hilarious account of one person with the guts to attempt to make the world a better place. A case of being ahead of its time in some way, it went largely unseen and was cancelled after two perfect seasons of endlessly gifable action.

Beatriz can’t help but compare unfavourably to that show, although it is often a lot of fun across its slender 80-minute runtime of deliciously savage class warfare. Hayek — a talented actor often frustratingly lumped into love interests roles in Adam Sandler and Kevin James comedies or stereotyped animation voice work – does some of her best work. She never allows Beatriz’s pious attitudes to lose their self-righteous antagonism. She plays Beatriz as prickly and often hard to read, sitting silent and watching as she carefully assesses the situation. Lithgow, too, is great, offering a suitably slimy performance. Both are worthy of Oscar consideration, but Latina actresses giving quiet, contemplative performances will always take a backseat to a loud, villainous white man in that regard.

Where the film stumbles is in its denouement. Leaving the cinema after its breezy, brief runtime (a blessing during a film festival), I mused about how Arteta (known best for directing another HBO comedy, Getting On) and White could have possibly ended their film in a way that would satisfy as drama yet also remain in character for its ensemble. What ultimately unfolds is something unexpected, but will potentially leave viewers feeling somewhat unfulfilled. Especially considering how awkwardly funny and stirring the first hour is.

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Beatriz at Dinner is in cinemas 21 September.

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Glenn Dunks is a freelance writer and critic from Melbourne. He also works as an editor and with film festivals while tweeting too much at @glenndunks.