Is there a genre for bizarre films where the plot and climax have no connection to each other? Along with that, the title of the movie had nothing to do with the actual plot of the film. All of this and more peculiar things keep happening in Spin Me Round. A story of a restaurant employee who is sent to an exotic location for training purposes and sets off a chain of events. These occurrences lead her to discover something mysterious about her employers.
Spoilers Ahead
Amber, The Chosen One
The movie begins with a montage of Amber Ruffman, a management-level employee with Tuscan Grove, a chain of Italian cuisine restaurants run by an Italian businessman named Nick Martucci. The montage helps the viewers understand her workflow and her contribution to making the Bakersfield franchise successful and the best Italian restaurant in the area. She comes across as a hardworking woman, and she is rewarded by being chosen to be a part of the management-level program in Italy. Ever since the name of the country was mentioned, she couldn’t stop thinking about the wonderful time she is going to have. There’s a trope of American characters being fascinated by European countries, their laid-back lifestyles, and their loose attitude toward love.
Amber is carried away by the prospect of living there and the fact that she is hoping she will run into the love of her life. This again adds to the cliched stereotypes Americans have of Italians, and her expectations of someone from the native culture would sweep her off her feet. This film also sets up a satirical take on what people assume things are going to be like when they visit these countries. Thanks to pop culture, the stereotypes remain.
The Most-Awaited Italy Trip
On reaching Italy, she is joined by Deb, Jen, Susie, Dana, and Fran, the managers of Tuscan Grove from other parts of America, and they are moved to a basic-looking hotel instead of the Tuscan Villa they had assumed they would be put up at. This was the first red flag Amber noticed, and Craig taking away their passports was the next one. Unfortunately, she did not act on it. His act was illegal, which the girls didn’t notice because of the luscious scenery of the Tuscan region surrounding them. The training begins and so far she has not reached a point where everything seems too good to be true. Amber feels she is overthinking, but she is not. They are initially trained by Chef Liz, who designs the menus of all the Tuscan Grove restaurants, but soon she disappears.
As the training progresses, Amber seems to have attracted the attention of Nick, the CEO of the company, and she is whisked off to his yacht in the middle of the training by his assistant Kat. Amber starts feeling special, and she hopes her dream romance is finally coming to fruition. Nick’s attitude towards her and his way of asking her questions about her life and romance put her into a state of trance. She is surprised because she was never seduced this way. As mentioned above, she had only come across such scenarios in movies or books and started feeling as if Nick might be the one for her. An ideal situation indeed: a rich European boyfriend, and she would be the globe-trotting girlfriend.
Shattering The Illusion Of A Dream Romance
Amber’s illusion shatters when she sees Susie missing from the training under the pretext of some vague illness, and Jen also speaks as if the company gave her a script to memorize which she is blurting out. Amber’s instincts say there is something off about this program, and she would like to know more about it. At this point, even the viewers are quick to decide that the whole setup is a sham because, for a managerial program, there is an awful lot of cooking being taught, something Amber should have picked up from day one. It took a while for her to follow her gut instincts, and there was no turning back for her from then on.
She does it because she feels betrayed by Nick and his assistant, Kat, who she feels led her on. What triggered her was Nick giving attention to Jen when he went on talking about feelings and emotions with Amber. The viewers hope that Amber will unearth something shady about this company, and she is determined to dig deep into the Tuscan Grove program’s past participants.
‘Spin Me Round’ Ending Explained: What Do Amber And Dana Discover At Nick’s Villa?
Two people have disappeared from the program. Amber ropes in Dana to help them understand what is happening around them. Dana illegally gathers information about the previous participants, and they notice the chosen people were all women, which comes across as a weird coincidence. Dana concludes that since his name is gender-neutral, Nick and his team expected a woman to show up for the program. This shows the amount of interest Nick’s administration showed in doing basic background research on the participants. The story from here on takes a bizarre turn, as the viewers are as clueless as the characters in the movie about what exactly is going on and why they are being lied to about people who seem to have mysteriously disappeared.
Dana and Amber try to get their passports back, but to no avail, because Craig has probably been instructed by his higher management not to entertain their demands. The next day, Nick joins the team-building exercise and ends up having a meltdown over what he wanted Tuscan Grove to be and what it ended up becoming. It implies that Nick had very different plans for his restaurant. Ever since its popularity, Nick, based on the money he got off of it, has not looked back. But he regrets not retaining the niche status of the restaurant and ending up mass-producing the food. It is not clear if Nick was forced to convert his business into a franchise but he will have to probably live with it and not complain.
Dana creates a diversion to enter Nick’s villa in the evening to find out what is happening. Ever since the participants reached this place, they were curious to know what exactly was inside Nick’s palatial house. There is a sense of mystery around it as not everyone is invited there, which would include Amber, Dana, and the rest of the team from America. A curious yet excited Dana claims to have seen people with machine guns and a tied-up Liz, whom they think has been kept there for some ritual. Dana and Amber were not ready for what they were about to witness. Dana heads around the house and soon Amber hears his scream. She initially thinks Dana is dead, but it turns out he was only unconscious. The attack on Dana comes as a shock to Amber because she was not ready to believe that Nick and his people would physically harm people.
A semi-conscious Dana lets her know that he was attacked by pigs. This confuses Amber because she is not sure if Dana imagined it or if the concussion from the injury is making him say absurd things. The viewers are also eager and frustrated to find out what the big secret is behind these large doors. They enter a large room after being chased by a drift of pigs, only to witness an ordeal. The secret lives of the rich include Nick, his friends, Jen, Nick’s mother, and plenty of others indulging in carnal pleasures because apparently, this is what the rich people do. The final reveal is such a letdown because of all the buildup of something sinister, with the actual result being somewhat anticlimactic. All the men and women in it were chased out by pigs again, which is an absurd addition to the rich people’s perversity. How this scene was executed would remind you of plenty of ridiculous Hindi films in the comedy genre where no one has any idea what is happening.
A fiasco such as this was expected because the movie took a strange turn in the second half when the writers had no clue as to how to take the narrative forward. The end reveal is supposed to be hilarious, but it is anything but that. Spin Me Round ends with Amber’s confusion getting cleared, and all of them are sent back to America after Tuscan Grove made them sign an NDA for obvious reasons. The company would not want its secrets to come out. Not that any of it is illegal, but a scandal is far more lethal than actual criminal charges. This is what is perceived from their knee-jerk reaction to Amber finding out what happens in the villa.
Amber is back at her job, and Nick comes down to let her know the story from his side in the hope of getting her back into his life. Justified or not, she makes it clear she wants him to leave her be, because she is not willing to fall for his exotic accent because she is a hard-working woman who believes in retaining her self-respect and dignity over choosing the life of a trophy girlfriend. It can be assumed that Nick only wanted her to be his girlfriend, just to let the world know of his sincerity and as a PR stunt to improve the brand, Tuscan Grove. Thankfully, Amber can see through his intentions. She turned out to be the only woman Nick has ever come across who rejected him for who he is, and it is not clear if she would lose her job for it, for men are known for being egotistical about rejection. Amber is not afraid, and she will only work towards making better life choices.
