Film review: La Cocina

In many ways, Alonso Ruizpalacios’ La Cocina is a film constantly at odds with itself. It starts with a poetic montage about New York as our observant protagonist, Estela (Anna Díaz), makes her way to a restaurant in Times Square where she hopes to find a job. Estela doesn’t speak English, but she has experience working for a Michelin restaurant, and a contact in the kitchen whom she hopes can help her. However, none of that matters; she gets the job by pretending to be someone else and taking the role from another applicant. It’s dog-eat-dog here.

From the long introduction, we are slowly introduced to all the characters in the kitchen, particularly our de facto protagonists – Pedro (Raúl Briones) is an erratic chef who plays by his own rules, and his secret waitress girlfriend Julia (Rooney Mara), who is pregnant and contemplating an abortion. It’s the lunch rush hour, and the quality of food is not essential – this is, after all, a tourist hotspot that serves everything a tourist wants when they visit New York City – pizzas, pastas, chicken, lobster, sandwiches. This is not The Menu, this is the restaurant the head chef in The Menu would kill people over its mere existence.

Estela has to hit the ground running, but Ruizpalacios quickly forgets about her safety for some scenes, highlighting her inexperience. Instead, he lingers with the rest of the staff indiscriminately, with Pedro in the centre. There’s a fantastic scene right at the start with all the chefs cursing and teaching each other how to curse in different languages, until everything is disrupted by the one white-American chef telling them to speak English in America. It is as if his place is threatened not by his competence, but by his peers enjoying their time together.

The main crux of the film is the unattainable American Dream that eludes all the characters. Central to it is a moment when four of them (an African-American, a Moroccan, a Mexican, and a Colombian) take a break in a back alley and confess their personal dreams—a house, a peaceful life. One of them, the wisest one, tells instead a literal dream he had because he knows that in that country, dreams don’t materialise for people like them.

Ruizpalacios adds so much to the story. Loosely based on a classic Arnold Wesker play, he instead shoots everything with the frenetic energy of cinema verité. Not only is Pedro trying to convince Julia not to proceed with the procedure, but someone stole money from the till, the soda machine is broken, and the tension between some coworkers is about to hit breaking point. But this is Times Square and the show must go on. Ruizpalacios swerves the camera in these gorgeous continuous shots, barely registering the chaos surrounding them – the floor flooded with soda, the waitress losing her mind because the chicken isn’t ready, the customers complaining. Everything piles up, but it also feels alive and safe for some of them. Most of these characters live in their element. They’re happy, thriving even.

But visuals aside – and mind you, Ruizpalacios and his cinematographer Tomás Barreiro provide gorgeous and perfectly framed shots in this crisp black-and-white  picture– it feels like his script doesn’t evolve to the point he wanted to make. This imbalance seeps into the performances. Mara and Briones, experienced as they are, can hop between fake documentary and theatrical style, but the rest of the cast struggles with the tension between the two – preferring the scenes when their genuine self comes across. The aforementioned conversation about dreams is a perfect example of this and why the scene in its current state does not completely work.

There are many interesting ideas Ruizpalacios thinks about developing, but they are spread too thin during the film’s almost 140-minute duration. He didn’t want to waste the opportunity. Instead, he added every single idea he could about power imbalance in the workplace when the staff is in a fragile situation (illegals, low-income earners, etc) and the real underbelly of the metropolis (underpaid people in high-stressful jobs). The result is uneven and sometimes frustrating, but undeniably gorgeous. I hate to complain about a film’s duration, but La Cocina either needed to be either shorter or longer.

Verdict: 3.5 out of 5
For fans of plays-turned-films who don’t mind a couple of stress-inducing set pieces.