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Kitchen dramas are all the rage (literally). Angry chefs have graced our screens to critical acclaim in the likes of The Bear and Boiling Point, but new movie La Cocina is perhaps the one of the bleakest recent portrayals of restaurant work.
Directed by Mexican filmmaker Alonso Ruizpalacios and based on British playwright Arnold Wesker's 1957 play The Kitchen, La Cocina takes place almost entirely within the confines of The Grill, a tourist restaurant in Times Square, over the course of one day.
The restaurant has a large staff, both front and back of house, but the movie revolves mainly around Pedro (Raúl Briones Carmona), an undocumented Mexican chef, Julia (Rooney Mara), a pregnant waitress who's having an affair with Pedro (and deciding whether or not to keep his baby), and Estela (Anna Diaz), a new arrival in both the kitchen and the US and a family friend of Pedro's. Alongside the personal dramas that the characters bring to work, there's also the issue of a missing $800 from one of the registers, and every employee is being grilled (no pun intended) until the culprit is found.
Disorganized chaos
What begins as organized chaos in The Grill quickly descends into plain ol' chaos once the lunch rush kicks off: the kitchen floods with Cherry Coke when the soda dispenser malfunctions, Pedro antagonizes racist chef Max, Estela struggles to find her feet, and new, older waitress Laura is picked on by male kitchen staff. Customers are angry with the wait staff, the wait staff are angry at the chefs, and the chefs are angry at everyone: everyone is at breaking point all the time. The pressure cooker metaphor for kitchen work might be a tired one, but it's the most accurate.
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The focus is not on the food, but on the relationships (both good and bad) fostered between The Grill's four walls. Whatever fare is served there – burgers and pizzas, mostly – is thoroughly unremarkable; the only time we really get a proper glimpse of anything edible is when Pedro painstakingly prepares a sandwich for Julia before service commences, and the camera lingers on his hands in a way that makes it one of the most intimate scenes in the movie.
The camera is constantly moving, mostly around the kitchen, and occasionally into the restaurant or out into an alleyway where employees take their smoke breaks. When we do follow characters outdoors, it's so quiet and peaceful in comparison to inside – ironic, considering we're in the bustling tourist hub of New York City.
Now what?
In these quieter parts of the movie (moments stolen by the chefs in the alleyway, and between Julia and Pedro in the walk-in), Pedro is revealed to be very preoccupied with the idea of dreams. The American dream, of course, has not amounted to much for anyone in the film, so these characters must cast their minds a little further afield.
The film opens with a quote from an essay by the American writer Henry David Thoreau: "Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives," the on-screen text reads. "This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams." Pedro's coworkers, on the whole, keep their dreams simple, amidst the interruptions.
For Pedro, though, his ultimate fantasy is respect, something that The Grill's managerial staff don't tend to indulge their employees with. In one later scene, where Pedro is being questioned about the stolen money (which just so happens to be the exact amount Julia would need for an abortion) by manager Luis, a second-generation immigrant and self-identified American, he interrupts him to correct his Spanish. Given the context and what's at risk for Pedro, it's a futile gesture, but he can't help himself. If respect is off the table, he at least wants superiority, if only fleetingly.
"Now what?" the restaurant's head chef asks him in the movie's final moments, when tensions have reached a head, and it's a question that echoes throughout the film. At The Grill, workers are promised green cards that never materialise, staff share hopes and dreams that are just as elusive, and managerial improprieties are brushed under the carpet. Lives fall apart over the course of the shift documented in La Cocina, but it'll be business as usual the next morning.
La Cocina is out now in UK cinemas. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.
