After decades trying to sell it via Hollywood movies, more recently the so-called American dream has revealed itself as the American nightmare. The presidential elections have just proven that ‘the land of the free’ is actually the land of hatred, bigotry, and racism. A country whose backbone is built on hard workers coming from many different places but whose society isn’t ready to yet face it. Focusing precisely on that false dream, filmmaker Alfonso Ruizpalacios releases La Cocina, which premieres today (Nov. 7) in Mexico and tomorrow (Nov. 8) in Spain.
The movie opens with a text by Henry David Thoreau: “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.” With this, the Mexican director teases what La Cocina will be about: the world as a place of business where empathy, humankind, and gentleness is dead. Especially in a country like the United States, with no social infrastructure or efficient public services, where capitalism is rougher than anywhere else, and where the Latin saying ‘canis canem edit’ (dog-eat-dog) is the motto.
In La Cocina, we see a group of illegal migrants working in the kitchen at The Grill, a restaurant/tourist strap in Manhattan, New York. The two-hour-and-a-half long movie starts with bad news: the accountant realises that eight hundred dollars are missing from last night’s service. Hence, each and every one of the workers will be interrogated to find out the responsible. Despite this initial conflict, La Cocina isn’t really a film where cops try to solve a mystery; it’s a social drama that tackles topics like toxic working environments, exploitation, frustrated dreams, hopelessness, love, and loss.
The urge to survive no matter what or who is made apparent from the get-go: Estela, a young Mexican woman, gets to The Grill asking for a job, but she doesn’t have an appointment, any papers or even speak English. Thanks to a lucky mistake (the girl who had scheduled an interview is late, so she takes her turn instead), she ends up getting the job. Again, it’s a dog-eat-dog world. But in her first day in the kitchen nobody wants to work with her; they all have their stations (desserts, meat, pizza, pasta, etc.), which they protect fiercely. Until Pedro (played by the phenomenal Raúl Briones) takes her unwillingly. That’s when we meet him, our main character, a chaotic, trouble-making yet romantic dreamer.
The film happens at lunch rush, and as viewers, we feel almost as stressed as those workers. With a highly visual style, and filmed entirely in black and white, La Cocina puts the pedal to the metal, conveying anxiety and worry. This is extremely effective for us to relate to the fast-paced rhythm that these people are used to and the pressure they’re put under. It helps us understand why everyone seems to be, at some point or another, losing their mind. Cooks get into fist fights, the waitresses scream for their orders, and there’s a lot of crying, frustration, and helplessness.
In top of being overworked at a restaurant that exploits them given their situation (being illegals), they have to put up with a boss (Mr. Rashid) that gaslights them with fake promises of sorting out their papers soon. As one of the characters says in the movie, these people risked it all to come to the US and have no alternative. After years of putting up with it, they’ve learnt to be tough, to build a wall around them so no one can hurt them. Their resilience strips them away from their humanity. That’s what capitalism does, ultimately, to every one of us.
But there is another overarching storyline, the one of our main characters, Pedro and Julia (played by two-time Academy Award-nominee Rooney Mara). She’s an American waitress also working at The Grill, and has a romance with the Mexican cook. She gets accidentally pregnant, but she’s positive about having an abortion. But the day she’s scheduled to go the clinic, Pedro has second thoughts: what if that child, as he says, is the only good thing to come out of this damned place? He’s a dreamer, and despite all his surrounding is aggressive and unwelcoming, there is still hope in his heart.
This is Alfonso Ruizpalacios’ fourth feature film, and it’s the first one with an adapted screenplay. The Mexican director based La Cocina loosely on the play The Kitchen by Arnold Wesker, which he read while working at a restaurant in London, and he then decided he’d someday make a movie out of it. In an official statement, he says: “I started daydreaming about this film when I worked as a dishwasher and waiter at the Rainforest Cafe in downtown London during my student days. (…) Reading the play at the same time that I was working in an industrial kitchen made the experience much more interesting (and the work-days bearable).”
He adds: “Frontiers play a big role in this film: physical, spiritual, and social. The vertical structure of the kitchen is a perfect setting to explore what lies beneath a divided society that is stuck in the same living space. Seen under this light, a New York City restaurant, with its marked divisions between Front and Back of House, between Management and Workforce, American and Foreigner, becomes a perfect metaphor of the modern world.”
Ruizpalacios came broke into the scene ten years ago with Güeros (2014), which quickly positioned him as one to watch, thanks in part to winning awards like Best Opera Prima at the Berlinale festival, Best Latin-American Movie at San Sebastián Film Festival, or Best Director at Tribeca Film Festival. Now, after other successful movies like Museo (2018) and Una película de policías (2018), which have also won several awards worldwide, he’s back with his first feature film where English and Spanish (and even some Arabic and French) intertwine to showcase a complex reality that many prefer not to acknowledge.
