Half of Boiling Point

Work and play have both been intense lately, and seeing a film seemed like a good break from life from couple of hours. Boiling Point was showing at the Barnet Everyman yesterday morning, and having worked as kitchen staff a lot in my youth (I was never neat and tidy enough to be a waitress), and being intrigued by the one-shot camera technique, I overcame the embarrassment of being a solo film attendee (the ticket guy felt sorry for me and spoke to me like a doctor speaks to a sick child), and went along.

It begins with a bang. The stress starts straight away. Stephen Graham is a mesmerising actor, and he plays chef Andy Jones, a chef with a boiling-over life, absolutely pitch-perfectly. His foil is chef Vinette Robinson, who tries to keep the peace and calm while cauldrons full of tension seethe and bubble all around her. Oh, it's such a good film, so well-observed. The characters are totally believable, and the things that disrupt the smooth working of the kitchen and restaurant are so real. The passive aggression, the overt racism, the pulling of rank, the loss of temper, the lies and deception, the fear...

You can't disengage from that one long, long, sometimes flawed camera shot. It's you, there in the restaurant, living through it all, from the nasty triumphalism of the food inspector onwards. Everything you could cringe at is there, played out not just in language, voice and ace direction, but also in each actor's facial expressions. There is no woodenness here: every single member of the cast gives it 100%.

It was so good that I literally couldn't bear it. It encapsulated the drama of every job in an organisation. I recognised characters and behaviours from the University where I work, which is a completely different professional environment. The shifting pecking order, and the jostling for some sort of position of respect. The realism was so.. well, real. No: I could't bear it and I had to leave. 

Do go to see it, but don't tell me what happens at the end, because I'd like to see the whole thing through some other time, when my own life isn't quite so overpowering.