A dinner party from hell? Who hasn’t been to one at least once in their lives? But nothing you may have experienced compares to what poor Beatriz (Salma Hayek) goes through when she gets stranded at the mansion of a client because her car won’t start. You see, Beatriz is a healthcare worker, a masseuse and a healer. She also happens to be hispanic. Her clients are stinking, filthy rich and all their friends are stinking, filthy rich, too.

So Beatriz, a woman of quiet dignity and a deep seated sadness finds herself at a table with her hosts, the gracious Cathy (Connie Britton), her arrogant husband Grant, a social climbing couple (Jay Duplass and Chloe Sevigny) that blends into the wall in their in matching outfits that can only be described as greige, and the vile, trash talking, golf playing real eastate billionaire Doug Strutt (John Lithgow) whose ressemblance to a certain U.S. president is clearly intended.

Salma Haek in Beatriz At Dinner, directed by Miguel Arteta.

killer films

The first thing he does is mistake Beatriz for the help – a total cliche, but one that works in Beatriz at Dinner, a dramedy by Miguel Arteta. A discussion about social injustice, healthcare and education gets the evening off to a more than uncomfortable start, and it all goes haywire from there. Yet with all his despicable braggadocio, spouting lies and nonsense, this 0.1 percenter does not come close to Trump.

While shooting the movie, no one expected the current real life political situation, said Hayek while meeting with the HFPA in the never-ending snowstorm at Sundance: ‘Nobody thought that Trump would win, and we all underestimated the division in this country.

As Beatriz, Hayek gives one of the great performances of her career in her fellow countryman’s film: ‘Except for Robert Rodriguez, no Mexican director has ever given me a job until now. Where have they been?!’ she laughs before dashing off into the snow in a pair of comfortable yet fashionable lace-up leather boots, after deciding that her Gucci high heels would be thoroughly inappropriate legbreakers in this weather.

Hear what Salma Hayek has to say about Beatriz at Dinner from the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.