La cocina: tensions boil over in Alonso Ruizpalacios’s frenzied New York kitchen drama

There has always been a resolutely theatrical element to Alonso Ruizpalacios’s films. In Güeros (2014), the Mexican student protests of 1999 were framed as street theatre through the eyes of a teenager in the capital as he pursues his father’s rock idol. Museo (2018) provided an astute reflection on colonialism and its legacy in the shape of a witty heist movie about two slackers who steal a collection of artefacts from Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology. A Cop Movie (2021) offered a sly, playful reflection on the relationship between Stanislavskian role play and policing in contemporary Mexico City.

Raúl Briones, compelling in the role of the actor playing the policeman Montoya in A Cop Movie, enjoys a central role in La cocina as Pedro, the volatile migrant sous chef embroiled in a complex affair with waitress Julia (Rooney Mara) in a large New York restaurant staffed by illegal, undocumented workers. To explore the dynamics and tensions of a constrained work environment, Ruizpalacios – an accomplished theatre director – reworks Arnold Wesker’s 1957 hyperrealist play. This is its second outing for the screen and far more adventurous than James Hill’s 1961 version, in part because Ruizpalacios offers a loose adaptation capturing the overlapping dialogue and actions of the backstage arena of the labyrinthine restaurant – here relocated from London to New York.

Shot in glacial black and white with quick editing cutting between the different characters, the frantic comings and goings have an appropriately hellish dimension. The restless camera jumps from group to group – Dominicans, Mexicans, Moroccans – the invisible undocumented human beings who toil there, navigating difficult personal circumstances and trying to hold down a job while retaining a sense of dignity and self. Their stories are handled with edge, wit and a Brechtian sense of distance. 

The film focuses on what happens behind the scenes – although there are a number of brief moments that capture the slick operation of The Grill, with the waiting staff (exclusively women) in their 50s-style retro-striped dresses and matching plimsolls. Ruizpalacios adds new texture to Wesker’s play with Pedro and Julia’s illicit affair. She is pregnant and needs to arrange a quick abortion; he wants to keep the baby. Pedro is violent, unpredictable and volatile. He is sup posed to be guiding new employee Estela (Anna Diaz) – the viewer surrogate plunged into this aggressive atmosphere – on her first day in this new job. Estela sells herself to manager Luis (Eduardo Olmos) by saying she has come though Pedro – she knows Pedro’s mother back home in Huauchinango.

A series of squabbles threatens to tip the agitated atmosphere into violence. The discovery by Mark, the finance manager, that $800 (the price of Julia’s abortion) is missing from the till adds to the jitters. Pedro and fellow sous chef Max (Spenser Granese) have a history – Pedro having threatened Max with a knife the previous day – seemingly related to Max’s alleged resentment of the ‘brown’ staff who keep the kitchen going. Pedro and Julia oscillate between tender caresses and full blown arguments; the head chef rules the kitchen through fear and threats; and the whole shift takes a surreal direction when a Cherry Coke machine malfunctions, flooding the kitchen.

Close-ups abound. Nervy changes of camera direction further contribute to the frenzied rhythm as we follow the characters through the cramped kitchen and wider restaurant corridors. But this exhausting pace is punctuated with moments of calm, relaxation and laughter: staff eating together before the shift or having a cigarette at the back of the restaurant; workers sharing jokes; Pedro and Julia stealing kisses. Forays into colour heighten the mood – including an intense scene in blue hues in the giant fridge – cutting through the cool black-and-white palette.

Ruizpalacios captures the precarious existence of these workers – the dreams they nurture and the pressures of the toxic work environment – through an almost musical cinematic rhythm that’s matched by Tomás Barreiro’s pulsating score. The director’s visual virtuosity was very present in A Cop Movie, as the relationship between artifice and reality was prised apart. In many ways La cocina feels like a sibling film, but seen in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidential victory and his ruthless stand on immigration, the film’s depiction of the exploitation that underpins the American Dream feels depressingly timely.

► La cocina is in UK cinemas from 28 March.