• Source: La cocina

La cocina (Spanish for 'The Kitchen') is a 2024 drama film written and directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios. The film is based on the 1957 stage play The Kitchen by Arnold Wesker, which was already adapted to the 1961 film "The Kitchen".. However, while in the play and the earlier film the kitchen staff were continental European immigrants, in the present film they are mostly Latin Americans with some Arabs.
The film stars Raúl Briones Carmona, Rooney Mara, Anna Diaz, Motell Foster, Oded Fehr, Eduardo Olmos and Spenser Granese.
It had its world premiere at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival on February 16, 2024, and was released in the United States on October 25, 2024, by Willa.




Premise


Set at a restaurant in Manhattan, New York.




Plot


Rashid, a successful Arab American entrepreneur, runs "The Grill" - a large scale Times Square tourist trap. The kitchen, located deep underground, is staffed by illegal immigrants, mostly Latin Americans with some Arabs, who must work at breakneck speed in the rush hours to fulfill the orders brought to them by the waitresses who are predominantly white Americans. The Boss Rashid regularly promises to obtain for the cooks a legal status in the US, but fails to act on such promises.
The earlier scenes focus on Estela, a newly arrived Hispanic immigrant who comes to work in "The Grill" and gets introduced at record speed to its staff and the restaurant's rough ways. Then Estela fades to the background and the bulk of the film focuses on the stormy relationship between Perdo - a charming, hot-tempered Mexican cook - and Julia, a white American waitress. (Relationships between Hispanics and "Gringos" - and specifically, between male Latin American immigrants and female "Gringas" - are a constant subject in the conversations of the film's kitchen staff.) Julia is pregnant and is determined to get an abortion; Pedro, deeply in love with her, wants her to keep the child and engages in a fantasy of the two of them running away to an unspoiled beach in Mexico, where his son could run free on the shore. However, Pedro does get her the 800 Dollars needed for the abortion and she eventually goes through with it.
Pedro gets in trouble - first for responding violently to a provocation by a fellow cook, then for generously giving to a hungry homeless vagrant one of the restaurant's treasured lobsters. To cap it all, the sum of 823 Dollars is reported to have disappeared from a restaurant cash register, and Pedro is suspected of being the thief. Eventually, the lost money is discovered under a table and it turns out there was no theft. But then Pedro is shocked to discover that Julia had concealed from him the fact that she is already a mother, raising alone the ten year old Abe.
In the final scene, Pedro goes unhinged, embarking on a wild rampage in both the underground kitchen and the plush restaurant upstairs - overturning tables, destroying equipment and bringing the restaurant to a standstill. The film ends with the Boss Rashid confronting Pedro and asking again and again "Why did you do it? Why did you do it?" but Pedro remains silent.




Cast


Raúl Briones Carmona as Pedro
Rooney Mara as Julia
Anna Diaz as Estela
Eduardo Olmos as Luis
Motell Foster as Nonz
Oded Fehr as Rashid
Laura Gómez as Laura
James Waterston as Mark
Lee Sellars as Chef
Spenser Granese as Max
Julia Haltigan as Trisha




Production


In April 2022, it was announced Rooney Mara had joined the cast of the film, with Alonso Ruizpalacios directing from a screenplay he wrote.
Principal photography took place in Mexico City.




Release


It had its world premiere in Competition at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival on February 16, 2024. In August 2024, it was announced Willa would distribute the film in the United States on October 25, 2024. Cinépolis Distribución scheduled a November 7, 2024 theatrical bow in Mexico.




Reception


On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 76% of 37 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.9/10.
Robert Daniels of RogerEbert.com called the film "a monumental work of righteous anger" that "aims at the grinding, chewing machinery of not only the American dream but the remnant of the failed egalitarian promise of the industrial commerce". The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney wrote "There's a surging life force felt in every scene of Alonso Ruizpalacios' superbly acted La Cocina — at times ebullient but more often on edge, if not careening dangerously toward disaster or violence". IndieWire's David Ehrlich gave the film a B, writing, "The more that La Cocina alternates between operatic long-takes and grease-stained close-ups, the more you can feel its characters fighting to retain their souls in the face of a parable that’s eager to cast them as collateral damage". In a more critical review, Screen International's Lee Marshall wrote "This constant striving for symbolic import sums up the issues of a maximalist drama that is full of drive, ideas and ambition, but charts no satisfying dramatic arc, and too often feels simply strident".




Accolades


The film was selected in Competition at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, thus it was nominated to compete for Golden Bear award.




References






External links


La cocina at IMDb

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