La Cocina captures the frenetic energy of the lunch rush at The Grill, a bustling restaurant in Manhattan's Times Square. When money goes missing from the till, suspicion falls on Pedro (Raúl Briones), an undocumented cook who dreams of a better life and is in love with Julia (Rooney Mara), an American waitress who cannot commit to a relationship. Rashid, the restaurant owner, has promised to help Pedro obtain legal status, but a shocking revelation about Julia compels Pedro to spiral into an act that threatens to shut down one of the city's busiest kitchens once and for all. The film is a comic and tragic tribute to the invisible people who keep our restaurants running and our stomachs full, all while chasing an elusive version of the American dream.

The Garden Cinema View:

La Cocina will inevitably draw comparisons to the likes of Boiling Point and The Bear but, high-kitchen-anxiety aside, this is quite a different concoction. Alonso Ruizpalacios is less interested in the success of a restaurant than he is in presenting a convincing demonstration of a soul-grinding capitalist system and addressing the specific immigrant experiences of those who staff many hospitality establishments. The film’s stage origins, the limited location, and single day setting, all allow Ruizpalacios the foundation to (albeit didactically) showcase these sobering themes.

The restaurant featured here is a masterful labyrinth of service corridors, industrial fridges, and frozen back alleys; the kitchen area itself is a kind of broiling hellscape, ever on the edge of ignition. This space is explored by Juan Pablo Ramirez's fluid and serpentine monochrome cinematography. This ultra stylised sheen turns the set piece ‘service rush’ sequences into surreally graceful choreography, closer to the likes of Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover than films such as Boiling Point. Such formalism removes us from the stress of the action, and to a degree some of the emotion, but again serves to bring us closer to the director’s key themes.

Cast:
Raúl Briones, Rooney Mara Anna Diaz, Motell Foster, Oded Fehr