Well, before we begin let’s get the obvious gag out of the way - nothing on The Menu is cruelty free. When enigmatic celebrity chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) extends a coveted dinner invitation to a very select clientele, he sets in motion a plan as carefully curated as the meats hanging in his on-site smokehouse. From the moment they are dropped at the private pier of his hyper-exclusive restaurant, Hawthorne, this tartly acidic satire from Mark Mylod (Shameless, Succession) places its unfortunate cohort of dinner guests in a slow cooker and begins, bit by bit, to ratchet up the heat.

The pacing is a masterclass in ramping up tension, accompanied by a hair-raising score from Colin Stetson, whose work on Hereditary is recalled frequently here. Hawthorne’s severe brutalist architecture and the almost skeletal trees that line the shores of its private island instil an instinct to be careful where you tread. The kitchen staff, led by the murderously polite and wonderfully unnerving Elsa (Hong Chau), eat, sleep and talk in military unison.

We view the action largely through the eyes of blunt, chain smoking Margot, played by Anya Taylor-Joy with a down-to-earth grit that pricks the pomposity of her fellow attendees, and in particular her impromptu dining companion, Tyler (Nicholas Hoult). An obsessive foodie whose view of Stowik seems to alternate between demigod and surrogate father, Tyler has brought Margot along as a last minute replacement for his original plus one, much to Slowik’s consternation. Hoult is slimily delightful in the role; there’s more than a little of his star turn in The Great in his ability to nibble happily on delicacies as all around him dissolves into chaos. Plus, his elitist upbraiding of Margot throughout the night, combined with what we later discover about the nature of their relationship, makes Tyler’s ultimate comeuppance one of the most laugh-out-loud hilarious and quietly excruciating sequences I’ve ever seen committed to film.

The strength of the ensemble cast really cannot be overstated. Janet McTeer and Paul Edelstein as string-pulling food critic Lillian Bloom and her editor lackey Ted are a perfect two hander, Lillian’s smug literati smarm underscored by Ted’s lickboot sycophancy. The trio of Arturo Castro, Rob Yang and Mark St. Cyr as macho tech bros out for a good time on the company dime are just the right side of insufferable, and John Leguizamo’s George Díaz injects some unexpected pathos into your usual washed-up celebrity caricature. Rounding out the group, Judith Light and Reed Burnley as Hawthorne regulars the Liebrandts bring a resigned melancholy to their table for two.

And then we come to the man himself. Fiennes’ Slowik is a fascinating and often frustrating figure to pilot the film’s satire. I should qualify that I think Fiennes does a phenomenal job, flitting from looming hawklike over his kitchen staff to greeting his guests with a cool, mannered hospitality, as each dish becomes more and more gruesomely pointed. His staccato claps to announce each course instil a Pavlovian jolt in both his diners and the audience that yet another grim culinary trial is on the way.

But here’s where The Menu’s satire gets a little muddled. There is a fascinating moment where Slowik asks Margot, the outlier, the guest who should not be there, to choose which side she’s on - the one that gives, or the one that takes. The exchanges between Fiennes and Joy are some of the strongest in the film; later in Slowik’s office they share a kind of solidarity in what they have endured in their respective fields of ‘hospitality’. It’s expertly manipulative on his part, exploiting their shared class struggle to convince Margot to surrender herself to what seems like a righteous collective cause. But Slowik forgot those working class roots long ago, actively abusing his power as a boss (especially with female staff) and encouraging the total compliance and expendability of his workers as much as your everyday fast food joint, right down to the classic ‘we’re a family’ corporate rhetoric. The point of the film where Slowik arguably finds some kind of redemption is in shedding the trappings of haute cuisine and preparing a well-made, unpretentious meal that recalls his humble beginnings as a fry cook, a meal borne from ‘love’ not ‘obsession’.

However this resolution, such as it is, doesn’t quite gel with where and how the rest of the film has chosen to direct its satire. As an audience, we are expected to snicker at the pomposity of both Hawthorne’s dishes and its patrons (such as the breadless bread course - “outrageous!”, Lillian indulgently declares). But we are also frequently invited to sneer at the guests who take the exquisite meals placed in front of them for granted, and thus validate Slowik’s singular genius. One tech bro dismisses an elaborately crafted starter by announcing that his chef back home could make it just as well. So which is it? Do we denounce the pretentious snobs showily savouring every morsel or the philistines that can’t see a good thing when it’s in front of them?

In addition, the visual language of the film clearly shows enormous respect for the artistry of fine dining. Chef’s Table’s David Green and food designer Dominique Crenn both served as consultants on the film’s cinematography and production design - Crenn even recreates some of her own Atelier Crenn dishes for the picture. It’s genuinely beautiful to witness and clearly takes real work to produce, and it makes Margot’s big closer of a speech, the moment that prompts Slowik’s last display of humanity, feel inconsistent with what came before it. You can’t spend the majority of the film’s runtime praising the craft with your camera and then, as Margot does, write it all off as pretentious bullshit; the real question should be how to emancipate that real craft from the immense privilege with which it's become associated. Plus, if one of the core themes of your script is the crap taken by people in the service industry, having a character win the day with a speech that essentially amounts to “I want to speak to a manager” is a sign that you may have taken a wrong turn.

As a whole, however, The Menu is absolutely delectable. If I seem too critical, it’s because I see so many glimpses here of what could have elevated it from very good to excellent. But, to quote another fictional foodie, “What’s the one thing better than an exquisite meal? An exquisite meal with one tiny flaw we can pick at all night.”