Fiennes, if anything, is too well cast: playing a finicky tyrant like Slowik is the opposite of a stretch for him, nor is there anything unexpected in his air of gentle sorrow at the world’s failure to meet his standards.

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I can only wonder what Slowik would think of the film he appears in, which visually has a prestige-TV sheen without being especially inventive, and in script terms is much more about giving us a fresh shock every 10 minutes than building a structure where every element slots into place.

Indeed, a certain ambivalence about artistic ambition is intrinsic to the whole premise (notice I didn’t say “baked in”). The target audience seems to be people who sometimes eat at fancy restaurants, but who also enjoy being told that people who eat at fancy restaurants are pretentious snobs.

In other words, despite appearances, the film’s desire to unsettle runs a distant second to its desire to please. Bearing that in mind, The Menu offers a fair amount of holiday fun.

The Menu opens in cinemas on November 17.

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