“House of Spoils” (2024) stars Oscar winner Ariana DeBose as Chef. After seven years working at Taurus under the renown Marcello Ricci (Marton Csokas, who for once is not playing a villain), she leaves her job and strikes out on her own to open a restaurant under the concept of a high-end destination dining experience, i.e. hoofing it to the sticks for a fancy meal. By selecting Lucia (Barbie Ferreira) as her sous chef, Chef’s investor, Andres Soltani (Arian Moayed), complicates an already stressful situation. The site of the restaurant appears to be haunted, and there are rumors that the prior owner was the local Witch (Imola Gaspar). Will Chef find her way?
“House of Spoils” breaks a fundamental rule. If the main character does not have a name, it is a bad sign, but most people will be so focused on DeBose that they may not notice that she plays an underdeveloped protagonist who only stands out when she adopts others’ styles. There is no doubt that Beverly native codirector and cowriter Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy put a lot of themselves into the story about a woman trying to be confident and find her voice in a male dominated profession, but they inadvertently tell another story that is inadvertently depressing. By not giving their protagonist a name, it allows anyone to project themselves on to the character.
The film opens with Chef standing out among the masses of people in the professional kitchen. Marcello assesses her as a good, obedient soldier, not a leader. Hailing from Newark and often retreating in hiding in her hoodie, other than some sass and a collection of prescription drug bottles, Chef has no solid profile, and Marcello may be right. Most aspiring chefs dream of opening their own restaurant and have notebooks filled with their dream menus, but when she arrives at her isolated restaurant, also frustratingly unnamed, she is consulting Marcello’s cookbook to make her own dishes. It is realistic that she wilts without the approval of an authority figure. She is either a meek, retiring figure or the swaggering type of woman that is expected to emerge after surviving the heat of a professional kitchen and adopting the habits of toxic male coworkers. As she prepares to open her restaurant, she adopts a looser, swaying style as if one of the witches from Shakespeare’s “Tragedy of Macbeth” possessed her. DeBose is so good at filling in the blanks that it may be easy to miss that the protagonist is an archetype.
The main problem of “House of Spoils” is that the threat of possession is normally alarming because it means that an entity steals a body, and the rightful owner gets imprisoned in their body. Instead, Chef’s attitude shift is framed as her true self emerging. This alteration would be fine without the supernatural shenanigans if her new environment was her muse. Strong on atmosphere, the haunting and the presence of the prior owner is the most evocative element in the story as food goes bad, insects infest, and a huge rabbit destroys the garden. The house and its grounds are lush, fecund and verdant. It looks as if the wilderness is ready to reclaim the uncultivated grounds, and in American culture, the untamed wild has always been associated with the devil, who does not make a special guest appearance.
“House of Spoils” toys with the idea that Chef and her predecessor, Magnus (Bela Ficzere), arrived already touched, but the real cause of this change in behavior is whoever is haunting the grounds. A ghost is responsible, and not just any ghost: the ghost of the Witch! The narrative’s main ambiguity is whether this ghost is a friend or a foe. While deliberating, the filmmakers get to have their cake and eat it too without hurting the internal logic of the story, which often trips up other filmmakers and makes them seem as if they are punking out when they refuse to take a stand. Is the Witch a primal mentor to help her tap into the eternal feminine or a saboteur out to drive people mad who dare to use her place? Chef alternates between wonder and fear as she experiments with the local produce. In the end, it is a matter of perspective.
“House of Spoils” is at its strongest when it depicts the competitive dynamics of working in the culinary arts though it never intends to sustain that thread as “The Menu” (2022) did. The best recurring theme is how Alvin (Gabriel Drake) knows so little about food, yet he oversees getting supplies. Anyone who has watched a Gordon Ramsay television series knows how lethal processed or frozen food should taste to a refined palette. Alvin also needs to wear a bell as he startles Chef by appearing at unpredictable times in unexpected places. It is unclear whether the filmmakers considered the role that Chef’s race played in her travails, especially the rivalry between Chef and Lucia, a younger white woman and a potential threat to Chef’s job security. Though very experienced, Chef has no margin for error, but Lucia, who has no experience, often places herself in judgment over Chef and has more of Andres’ favor. Chef alleges a sexual relationship between Lucia and Andreas, which Lucia reacts negatively to as if it is not true. The narrative’s underlying tension is for Chef to find another way to command others outside the patriarchal framework so they can be equals and abandon the hierarchy, which only pits them together. Almost as an afterthought, this idea extends between the restaurant workers and privileged customers.
It is a nice idea, but one untethered from the overall context of history or sense of place, which is probably why “House of Spoils” is not getting favorable reviews. It does not resonate as authentic with viewers on a gut level.
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If you do not want people to have wrong assumptions that demonize women, maybe give them names other than Witch. Just saying. The Witch is not a witch. During an era when photographs existed, probably the twentieth century based on their clothes and racial mix, she was part of a group of women who used food to heal ill people and just vibe. To be fair, I do not know a lot about Wiccan but are they so racially mixed? It is a nice sentiment, and I applaud the utopian impulse, but it is dropped in for only a few minutes, so the aspiration does not take root, especially considering women are not a monolith or uniformly good. Women are not organically harmonious. Just look at the voting demographics of 2016. 54%. This vision of the world is untethered from any era, geography or racial, sociological realities.
Then suspicious villagers try to lynch the Witch, who escapes, bures herself and dies under the cellar. Yes, women get persecuted, but this feels like a stretch, and I enjoyed “Suspiria” (2018). Not since “The Shawshank Redemption” (1994) has someone done such an impressive job of building a tunnel. The dying on cue trick is neat too. Anyway, the Witch uses mold and insects to critique Chef, so she stops making anemic food, but I don’t care what the filmmakers’ intention was, the Witch basically bullies Chef to make food the way that she wants her to and just uses different techniques from Marcello. She pitches a fit and withdraws success if Chef is not obedient. Chef, my ass. Chef is still a soldier. Sure, it is better than the food that Chef was making, and she appears to be the leader, but still, she did not find her voice distinct from the Witch. She is not building on what she learned because there has been no time or development since Chef began her supernatural apprenticeship. She never consented to this relationship.
Also Andreas locked Chef in a cellar and nearly died yet it is cool because it turned into a rebirth ceremony. No, he still needs to pay for unlawful imprisonment. Basically, Chef emerges covered in dirt from being underground and entrances every customer with her irreverent, earthy, wild, feminine (eye roll) cooking style. The diners are delighted to try her food and are like, “We do not need any stupid sanitary regulations. Don’t wash up!” And honestly if DeBose was cooking and doing performance art, I would probably eat her food too so realistic, but that restaurant is getting shut down.
All of that so a bunch of strangers, including Marcelo, who is toxic, controlling and undermining, can validate and appreciate Chef and in turn, the Witch, which may be the most realistic and ridiculous part of the story. We really do go to insane lengths to get approval from the wrong people, but the filmmakers do not see that and are like, “Yippee! Happy ending!” Um, no, but I’ve been there and probably still am. We’ve got to work on this. Stop serving people who do not appreciate you. What is the point of tapping into the primal just to play the same game? If the answer is that they are the chief people who need that nurturing, fair, but I do not care. There are too many media representations of Black women healing the community without being poured into.
“House of Spoils” is unsatisfying because it is ultimately a feel-good story without consequences that veers from uncomfortable emotions, which is what the filmmakers wanted: a fairytale. The story works on a basic level, but I favor the catharsis of retribution in my movies and a more rigorous grounding in intersectionality. I’m still going to watch their take on “The Stand” (2020).
