The decadent luxury and moral rot of extreme wealth; a location as isolated as it is idyllic; lithe young bodies glistening in sunlight; the churning ocean lapping at the shore; relationships marked by melodramatic tumult and scandalous secrets. These aesthetic and narrative trappings of Miguel Ángel Jiménez’s The Birthday Party contain undeniable pleasures, yet are unavoidably, fatally familiar. Look to The White Lotus as just one example of how pulpy, soap-operatic dramas of the ultrarich, set in vacation destinations and with a polished veneer of prestige, are well-trodden and reliable sources of entertainment. The Birthday Party, though persuasively performed and appealing to the eye, unfortunately plays like a faded derivative of Mike White’s ultra-popular HBO series. Little wonder, then, that Jiménez’s film has been acquired by HBO Max, where it will doubtless be auto-played for thousands of subscribers upon finishing their White Lotus binges.
Willem Dafoe, decked in wide-framed eyeglasses and high-end linen, plays Marcos Timoleon, a Greek mogul modeled on Aristotle Onassis. He is preparing for his daughter Sophia’s (Vic Carmen Sonne) 25th birthday party on his extravagant private island, but his motives stretch beyond simple festivity: having learned that his daughter is pregnant by tapping her phone calls, he aims to buy off the father-to-be, a British journalist named Ian Forster (Joe Cole) who has written his as-yet-unpublished biography; set her up with her childhood friend Carlos (Carlos Cuevas), the son of a Spanish marquis; and abort the pregnancy. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Panos Karnezis, The Birthday Party is set in 1975, and geopolitics lurk alongside the domestic drama: the marquis (Francesc Garrido), squeezed by the impending death of Franco and Spain’s expected relinquishment of its territory in the Western Sahara to Morocco, uses his son as a bargaining chip when negotiating with Marcos to maintain ownership of some of the infrastructure in the Sahara.
Dafoe’s characteristic mix of charm and menace suit him to the role of a scheming, charismatic mogul, and the supporting roles are as effectively filled. As his soon-to-be ex-wife and Sophia’s stepmother Olivia, who Marcos dangles a hefty divorce settlement in front of in exchange for her intervening with Sophia, Emma Suarez capably conveys how her character negotiates between doing the right thing for her loved ones and detaching herself in favor of thoughtless luxury. Vic Carmen Sonne gives perhaps the most dynamic performance. Playing a character who, for much of the runtime, functions more as an object of Marco’s machinations than a three-dimensional subject, Sonne manages to convey Sophia’s roiling internal conflicts with both nuance and expressiveness — in a pivotal scene where she realizes all that Marco really knows about her, Jiménez smartly keeps the frame focused on Sonne’s face, on which her sense of betrayal registers vividly and instantaneously.
Despite effective performances, the narrative development and dialogue, written by Jiménez in collaboration with Giorgos Karnavas and Nikos Panayotopoulos, too frequently veer headlong into overgeneralization and cliché. The characters never quite transcend reading as two-dimensional types, and within the many long, talky scenes involving high-stakes negotiations — personal, financial, and political — tired bits of dialogue undercut the tension (“There are things that can’t be bought,” Ian tells Marcos in a particularly lazy turn of phrase.)
The Birthday Party fares somewhat better when Jiménez allows an arch, wry tone to counterbalance the more earnest drama, and when he and director of photography Gris Jordana linger on the luxurious landscape and the actors’ beautifully framed bodies. Yet these pleasures are essentially shallow, surface-level accoutrements that mask a hollow core. The dramas of the wealthy, while always popular, have oversaturated film and television in recent years, and fresh perspectives are needed for any new entry to feel vital as works of art or entertainment. Jiménez’s competently constructed and intermittently engaging film ultimately does not justify its stale take on well-trodden subject matter.
Published as part of Locarno Film Festival 2025 — Dispatch 2.
Comments are closed.