Stephen Graham drives this terrific, relentless, one-take film: Boiling Point reviewed

Boiling Point is a single-take drama set during a busy service at a London restaurant and it has to be the most stressful film of the year. I realise it’s early days, but if a more stressful film comes along I would be most surprised. If this film were a recipe, the first instruction would read: ‘Nerves, shred.’ Followed by: ‘Put in pressure cooker and whack the temperature up.’ It is brilliantly executed but also one of those films you can find compelling and engrossing while praying for it to be over.

It stars Stephen Graham, that little powerhouse of a fella, who now serves as a kitemark, surely. (Has he ever been in anything bad? Did you see him in Time?) And it is written and directed by Philip Barantini, otherwise an actor (Band of Brothers, Chernobyl, Humans) who has spent his ‘resting’ periods working in kitchens. The single, 92-minute, continuous take was filmed in an actual restaurant (Jones & Sons, Dalston; modern British) with no cheating. No secret cuts, no secret edits, no Birdman funny business. (I don’t have space for the logistics but do look all that up. It was fiendishly difficult.) Wherever anyone goes, we are right there. This offers an anxious, intimate, improvised feel. Plus it’s real cooking in real time. (The duck looked good. No turbot today. You’ll learn why.)

Graham plays Andy, the restaurant’s head chef and part-owner and as we follow him on his way into the restaurant for that evening’s service we already understand, by what he’s saying into his phone, that he has domestic problems and a young kid he doesn’t see enough of. There is such jittery tension from the first moments that we also understand there is something broken about Andy and we are on it, asking ourselves: can he hold it together? Or will he implode? That water bottle he is always clutching.