In The Birthday Party, The Rich Eat Themselves

Another lush, sun-drenched film about the ultra-wealthy behaving monstrously!

The Birthday Party (Miguel Ángel Jiménez, 2025), based on Panos Karnezis’s 2007 novel, stars Willem Dafoe as Markos Timoleon, an Onassis-like shipping tycoon throwing a lavish birthday celebration for his daughter, Sofia (Vic Carmen Sonne), on his private Mediterranean island. The guest list — a surreal mix of friends, enemies, jet-setters, business sharks, Spanish fascists, and assorted hangers-on — sets the tone. What Sofia doesn’t know is that her father has planned the entire affair as a trap, designed to sabotage her secret relationship with his own biographer (Joe Cole), in a scheme so cold and calculated it borders on the diabolical. 

The film unfolds over the course of a single, pivotal day (and the aftermath of the next half-day) — a sharp contrast to Panos Karnezis’s novel, which provides a lengthy backstory for Markos; essentially a villain origin tale. In the book, the suspense often suffers as the narrative constantly shifts to the past. It leans heavily on info-dumps (“this happened, then that happened”) rather than offering fully developed scenes with dialogue, and the back-and-forth between the day of the party and Markos’s earlier life can feel choppy. 

That said, the novel does give a much more detailed account of his rise — from a poor kid in Anatolia to one of the world’s wealthiest shipping magnates — moving across continents and eras as he learns how to infiltrate and ultimately belong to the global elite. Jiménez could’ve chosen to adapt all of that, creating something more sprawling and epic, in the vein of The Brutalist (Brady Corbet, 2024), but that would’ve required a much bigger budget. Instead, narrowing the focus to this one day in the 1970s (and placing more emphasis on Sofia, the clearest victim of Markos’ many crimes of the heart) feels like a smart, efficient decision, and a perfect opportunity to revel in the decade’s excessive, hedonistic aesthetics. 

On paper, Willem Dafoe appears to be an ideal choice to portray Markos. An actor who moonlights as a Prada model with an effortless aura of European sophistication, he embodies the ageing, cosmopolitan elite. Dafoe is always riveting — one of the most compelling actors of his generation — and his presence alone brings a certain gravity to any film. However, he is also the kind of performer whose identity is never entirely absorbed into the role: he is always unmistakably Dafoe. While he has demonstrated the capacity for deeper, more transformative performances in the past, his turn here feels somewhat disengaged. 

But the women really command the screen here, especially Vic Carmen Sonne. Sofia is more than just a spoiled heiress — she’s a woman scarred by addiction and tragic losses (including the death of her biological mother and brother), trying hard to carve out some control over her life. She’s the emotional centre of the film; it’s brutal to watch someone so wounded not only grapple with a domineering father, but also face a violation of her body that crosses into the unthinkable. Like the character she plays, Sonne shifts emotional gears effortlessly, adapting to each moment with precision that makes the performance all the more noteworthy. 

Emma Suárez also delivers several powerful moments as Olivia, Markos’s second wife trying to escape his grip. She’s on the edge of reclaiming her agency (and brought her lawyer to the party to negotiate a divorce), but still vulnerable to his threats and emotional manipulation. She resents his money and power, yet can’t quite walk away from the life they afford her. It’s clear she’s developed a few tactics of her own — sometimes they land, sometimes they don’t — but none of them can compete with Markos’s sheer control, especially when it comes to protecting his bloodline. Her arc is equally devastating: a woman almost free, but not quite.

After the second act peaks in a haze of drunken, decadent poolside revelry, the real nightmare begins. When dawn breaks and the party ends, the film shifts into the dark and claustrophobic spiral it’s been hinting at all along. The third act plays out like a grim soap opera, each scene more unsettling than the last. The Birthday Party resists joining the current wave of Eat the Rich storytelling — here, the rich devour themselves. 

Still, it can’t help portraying Markos as a tragically delusional figure: so detached from basic humanity that his wealth blinds him to reality, driving him further into isolation as he convinces himself his intentions are pure. This idea is underscored by the closing credits song, “Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” (Nina Simone, 1964), delivered in spoken word by Dafoe himself. Yet, despite the psychological and spiritual decay on screen and what we know about certain real-life billionaire tycoons, the film occasionally feels too captivated by their wealth and excess, hesitating to fully condemn Markos’s unforgivable behaviour — or give him the punishment he truly deserves.