It’s not exactly revolutionary to mine restaurant kitchen dynamics for broader statements about class, privilege and power: the elements are literally all there, on a silver platter. Via Arnold Wesker’s 1957 play The Kitchen (filmed once before in 1961), it should have been an ideal setting for Alonso Ruizpalacios to make insightful observations about such a well-worn yet evergreen topic, and expectations were high given the director’s playfully cerebral experimentations with form and metaphor in previous films Güeros, Museo and A Cop Movie. Yet despite a promising start and top-notch talent on both sides of the camera, La cocina turns into a self-indulgent, patience-testing buffet imperfectly blended and heavy on calories. Sales can bank on Rooney Mara’s always welcome presence, but the high quality of individual ingredients is no guarantee of a digestible meal – though it does allow critics scope for a host of (tasteless?) food-related imagery.
Part of the problem is that Ruizpalacios lures us into believing we’ll be largely following young undocumented worker Estela Ramos (Anna Díaz), then promptly forgets about her as he unsuccessfully struggles to find a balance between his designated protagonists and a choral counterpoint, especially awkward given that the latter provides far more satisfying opportunities for the director to creatively explore such themes as crushing capitalism and the spuriousness of an American melting pot. That it’s all lensed in chromatically rich b&w by Juan Pablo Ramírez (The Gasoline Thieves, I Carry You with Me) makes it even more frustrating because it’s impossible not to think that La cocina should have been far, far better.
It begins on a ferry in New York harbor, the historical entry point for so many millions of immigrants lured by Lady Liberty’s capricious promise of welcome. In staccatoed imagery influenced by classic mid-20th century experimental cinema, Estela finds her way to Times Square and a cavernous restaurant called The Grill, where she hopes family friend Pedro Ruiz (Raúl Briones) will help get her a job in the kitchen. In the dark bowels of the establishment, lit like a budget film noir, Estela allows semi-sleazy HR manager Luis (Eduardo Olmos) to think she’s someone who actually had an appointment and he hires her after saying where she can buy a fake social security number.
Pedro has no recollection of Estela but she brings him messages from their hometown in Puebla State and she’s assigned to his work station, luckily since she can’t speak a word of English. The large kitchen is a United Nations of illegal immigrant communities trapped on the lower rung of a society that treats them as replaceable tools: Mexican, Colombian, Dominican, Moroccan, Albanian, French Caribbean/African plus one African American, Nonzo (Motell Foster) and one white guy, Max (Spenser Granese). Also in the kitchen is Chef (Lee Seliars), a cartoonish hot-head who looks and acts like a cross between Mussolini and Harvey Keitel in The Grand Budapest Hotel, while restaurant owner Rashid (Oded Fehr), himself a former immigrant, occasionally descends into this stainless steel Inferno to ensure his workers are churning out the grub as efficiently as possible.
The sense of heaving, barely controlled tension is exemplified in a scene where the kitchen workers exchange vulgar insults in their native tongues, edited swiftly together until it resembles a barnyard cacophony, broken only when edgy Max loses it and screams at them all to speak in English. It’s the kind of choral moment that Ruizpalacios does well, alongside a visually stunning scene in which Pedro exerts his dangerous charm on Julia (Rooney Mara) in front of a lobster tank as the crustaceans are spilled into the water in slow-mo. Pedro has an agenda beyond seduction: he got Julia pregnant and he’s determined to stop her from going to the abortion clinic that afternoon.
Though she remains an occasional observer, by now Estela is largely lost in the crowd, supplanted by the friction between Pedro and Julia as well as the explosive revelation from straightlaced accountant Mark (James Waterston) that more than $800 is missing from the till – exactly the price of an abortion. Ruizpalacios occasionally interrupts these volatile scenes with calm theatrical monologues, such as one delivered by Nonzo (Foster is excellent) and another by a homeless man (John Pyper-Ferguson). On their own they have merits, but they feel like adjuncts to an increasingly unrestrained, wildly overextended premise careening in all directions, and one can’t help but feel sorry for the actors when they have to slosh ankle-deep through the kitchen floor flooded by a malfunctioning Cherry Coke dispenser.
As Pedro, Briones exudes charisma – he’s mad, bad, and dangerous to know – yet the character is also deeply unpleasant in his monomania and the way he tries to push Julia to keep the fetus. By the time he has a final, over-the-top breakdown, the film has long outstayed its welcome and his histrionics do little to win back a modicum of sympathy for a man bulldozed by the American Dream. Rooney Mara fares better, partly because her flinty yet vulnerable aura works so well here, but once again she feels underused, and her character’s closing revelation is not just weak but pointless.
At least Juan Pablo Ramírez’s chiaroscuro cinematography provides greater rewards (the b&w switches to blue-and-white in the cold storage room), at times giving off a Russian Ark vibe as the camera dexterously glides along kitchen passages and out into the dining room, waitresses rushing past like 1930s chorines in the wings. If only La cocina could have lived up to its premise, the film would have given much to chew on, but individual courses do not make a feast.
Director: Alonso Ruizpalacios
Screenplay: Alonso Ruizpalacios, based on the play The Kitchen by Arnold Wesker
Cast: Raúl Briones, Rooney Mara, Anna Díaz, Motell Foster, Oded Fehr, Eduardo Olmos, James Waterston, Laura Gómez, Soundos Mosbah, Esteban Caicedo, Lee Seliars, Spenser Granese, John Pyper-Ferguson, María Fernande Bosque, Pía Laborde-Noguez, Shavanna Calder, Julia Haltigan, Bernardo Velasco, Nebli Basani, Leo James Davis
Producers: Ramiro Ruiz, Gerardo Gatica, Alonso Ruizpalacios, Lauren Mann, Ivan Orlic
Executive producers: Marco Polo Constandse, José Nacif, William Olsson, Patrick Pfupajena
Cinematography: Juan Pablo Ramírez
Production designer: Sandra Cabriada
Costume designer: Adela Cortazar
Editing: Yibrán Asuad
Music: Tomás Barreiro
Sound: Javier Umpierrez, Jaime Baksht
Production companies: Filmadora (Mexico), Panorama (Mexico), Salta la Liebre (Argentina), Fifth Season (USA), Astrakan (USA), Seine Pictures (USA), HanWay Films (UK).
World sales: HanWay Films
Venue: Berlinale (competition)
In English, Spanish, French
138 minutes
