Director: Alonso Ruizpalacios
Starring: Raúl Briones, Rooney Mara, Anna Diaz, Motell Foster, Oded Fehr, Spenser Granese, Soundos Mosbah
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 139 mins

La Cocina is written and directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios, a comedy-drama based on an Arnold Wesker 1957 stage play called The Kitchen. But Ruizpalacios updates this story about a Times Square tourist trap restaurant called ‘The Grill’ for the modern day. Rather than the kitchen staff being mainly continental European immigrants, here they are replaced with Latin Americans and Arabs, with the restaurant run by Rashid (Oded Fehr), a successful Arab-American entrepreneur. Rashid regularly promises the illegal immigrants a legal status in the US to keep the carrot dangling over them, but he never delivers on his promises. The waitresses are predominantly white American women. 

The film opens as Estela, a newly arrived Mexican immigrant comes to work at the restaurant where she knows Pedro, one of the cooks. Pedro is a hot-tempered cook whose girlfriend Julia (Rooney Mara) is one of the waitresses and is pregnant with his child, but determined to get an abortion, which Pedro disagrees with. Instead, he wants them to run away to an unspoiled beach in Mexico and escape their problems.

La Cocina is an odd film. I found its first hour quite profound as Ruizpalacios deftly sets the scene and introduces us to the charismatic, burnt out kitchen staff, with its tone steeped in anger. But the film then becomes exhausting and very self-indulgent in its scattershot approach, with a meandering narrative that often go nowhere, especially a protracted speech during a staff break. Fortunately, the film has something to say in its searing ending though. Ruizpalacios’ film is visually interesting, largely shot in black-and-white, save for a scene in a freezer, and the use of sound is excellent, with the constant ticking of a printer reeling off kitchen orders a brilliant touch to add to the stress.

The performances are good – Raúl Briones deftly portrays the chef at the end of his tether. Mara’s reliably fine but her waitress doesn’t get as much development as I’d like. Anna Diaz is another highlight as Estela but it’s a shame her character gets sidelined as the film progresses, especially seeing as her character is initially the audience’s view into how the restaurant is run. Oded Fehr is unrecognisable as the manipulative restaurant owner and has a commanding presence with his character’s God-like control.

La Cocina is an interesting and certainly original piece, and for the first half, this had the potential to be one of the best films of the year. But its scattershot second half brings the film down and while I appreciate the message Ruizpalacios is trying to convey, the meandering and self-indulgent approach in the second half doesn’t work.