‘Tony’ is a really intriguing biopic precisely because it doesn’t do what so many films in this genre would. There is no conventional trawl through somebody’s childhood, formative years, breakthrough, success and eventual celebrity. Instead, the film concentrates almost entirely on a particular moment when its subject is at a crossroads – and, for much of the film, there is little indication that we are even watching the early life of somebody who will become one of America’s most famous chefs.

The Tony in question is Anthony Bourdain, although the film is less interested in giving us an origin story than in showing us a young man who doesn’t yet have much idea what his story is going to be.

It is the summer of 1975 and Tony is a dropout, full of himself and apparently convinced that he is intellectually superior to most of the people around him. He’s cocky, self-assured and ambitious, but he’s also something of a pathological liar. He can’t take criticism, he has problems with alcohol and violence, and seems to regard the ordinary business of working for a living with something approaching contempt.

He believes he is destined for better things.

In particular, Tony imagines himself becoming a writer. He expects to receive a scholarship which will take him to university, but when his application is rejected, he cannot even bring himself to tell his family. The fantasy is more important than the reality.

And this is really where Tony becomes interesting, because the film is about somebody gradually discovering that the person he imagines himself to be might not be the person he actually is.

After an altercation at a seafood restaurant in Provincetown on Cape Cod, the owner takes pity on him. Tony ends up sleeping in a hammock and working in the kitchen. What initially seems like another temporary episode in the life of a young man drifting around without much direction gradually becomes something much more important.

He learns how to cook.

There is a wonderful irony here. Tony is embarrassed by the idea of manual labour. Working in a kitchen seems to him almost beneath the literary, intellectual identity he has constructed for himself. Yet it is precisely this blue-collar environment – demanding, physical, hierarchical and frequently antagonistic – which begins to give him the discipline and purpose that his fantasies of becoming a writer never could.

The kitchen becomes his education.

Bourdain later described his younger self in Kitchen Confidential as ‘a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout’, badly in need of being brought down to earth. That is essentially the Tony we encounter here. The film doesn’t sentimentalize him simply because we know what he will eventually become.

There is also an interesting romantic dimension involving Nancy (Emilia Jones, who is on sparkling form). Tony initially believes he can impress her with his literary aspirations and the grandiose version of himself he presents to the world. Yet what she finds more attractive is the increasingly grounded person emerging through his work in the kitchen.

There is a particularly revealing moment when Tony finally tells her the truth. Her disappointment isn’t really that he is working as a cook. It is that he lied about who he was.

That distinction is central to the film.

Tony thinks status will make him interesting. What he has to learn is that authenticity might make him interesting instead.

Antonio Banderas is particularly good as the chef who becomes his reluctant mentor. He is a no-nonsense figure operating in a macho environment, but there is also something soulful, compassionate and spiritual about him. He sees himself as absorbing the sins of the people working around him, and there is consequently a curious theological undercurrent to the film. Cooking becomes almost an exercise in mindfulness, discipline and redemption.

His relationship with Tony reminded me unexpectedly of ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. At the end of that film, Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly quietly gives Anne Hathaway’s character the recommendation which allows her to move forward, despite everything that has happened between them. Banderas performs a similarly generous act here when he writes Tony a letter of recommendation.

He could simply have done nothing.

Instead, having recognized something in this difficult young man that Tony has barely recognised in himself, he gives him the opportunity to take the next step.

The film is also wonderfully tactile, and you can almost smell both the captivating freshness of the ocean and the stomach-turning odours of the kitchen. Provincetown seems to exist somewhere between romantic possibility and grimy reality, and visually there is beauty everywhere, but Tony has to learn how to notice it.

And this is why the film doesn’t really require any knowledge of Anthony Bourdain.

Indeed, knowing too much might almost work against it. We don’t need constant winks towards the future celebrity chef, television presenter and writer. The film wisely avoids repeatedly announcing: look, this is the moment when Tony Bourdain became Anthony Bourdain.

Instead, it concentrates on a young man learning something much more basic: how to work.

There is an important lesson here about creativity, too. People can spend their lives talking about writing. They can tell everybody they are writing, construct an identity around being a writer and imagine the books they are eventually going to produce.

But if they aren’t actually writing, are they really writers?

Tony thinks he’s a writer.

What he actually does is make food.

And therefore, for the moment at least, he is a cook.

The cleverness of ‘Tony’ is that it ends without trying to transform that discovery into some triumphant declaration of destiny. This isn’t the story of Bourdain becoming internationally famous. It is merely one summer in 1975 when a rather obnoxious, directionless young man accidentally discovers that he might be good at something requiring considerably more humility and hard work than he had anticipated.

The title card at the end effectively tells us that the route Bourdain eventually took extends far beyond the events depicted here. That feels entirely appropriate. We know the destination, but the film is interested in the moment when he first discovers there might actually be a road leading somewhere.

In that sense, ‘Tony’ isn’t really about celebrity at all.

It’s about vocation.

Anthony Bourdain thinks he knows who he is and where he is going, only to discover that the life he had regarded as beneath him might actually contain the beginnings of his future. And perhaps that is the most satisfying irony of the film: the young man who desperately wants everyone to believe that he is a writer has to stop talking about himself long enough to learn how to cook before he can eventually become one.