Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Alonso Ruizpalacios
Starring: Rooney Mara, Raúl Briones, Soundos Mosbah, Anna Diaz, Motell Foster, Oded Fehr, Eduardo Olmos, Spenser
Granese
Arnold Wesker's 1957 play 'The Kitchen', and its 1961 screen
adaptation, took its audience into the sweaty bowels of a London restaurant,
where immigrants toil behind the scenes to prepare food for tourists, served
by local girls with forced smiles at the front of house. For this new
adaptation, titled La Cocina, Mexican writer/director Alonso Ruizpalacios relocates the drama to "The Grill," a
fictional restaurant in America's great tourist trap, Times Square, and
the continental European workers of previous versions have been replaced
by Latin-American immigrants.
The first of such we meet is Estela (Anna Diaz), a young Mexican
who arrives at The Grill early one morning hoping to get a job in its
kitchen. Impressed by her CV and her family's familiarity with a current
employee, cook Pedro (Raúl Briones Carmona), the restaurant manager (Eduardo Olmos) hires Estela on the spot and throws her in at the deep end.
Estela's main function in the narrative is to introduce us to the film's
world and its characters. At first it's an Altman-esque blur of faces, but
eventually the film settles its focus on two specific employees: Pedro and
waitress Julia (Rooney Mara). The pair are engaged in a
not-so-secret affair, pawing at each other at every opportunity and even
indulging in some meat locker activity that would give a health inspector
nightmares. Julia is carrying Pedro's child, but has scheduled a trip to
an abortion clinic for her lunch break. Pedro pleads with her to keep the
child, and is even arrogant enough to phone home and tell his parents he's
about to become a father.
Despite his objections, Pedro has cobbled together the $800 Julia needs
to fund the procedure. This is one of several confusing elements of
La Cocina, leaving us to wonder why he would willingly fund Julia's abortion if
he's so set against it. $800 also happens to be roughly the amount of
money that went missing from one of the restaurant's tills on the previous
night's closing shift, making Pedro the chief suspect in Julia's
mind.
Neither the will-she-won't-she of Julia's impending abortion or the
did-he-or-didn't-he of Pedro's guilt in the theft are particularly
engaging, treated as afterthoughts in a messy tangle of half-baked
subplots. Another question that's raised regards whether Pedro is
genuinely in love with Julia or simply using her to get his papers, which
would be made easier if they had a child together. Pedro's true feelings
are ultimately moot though, as he's so obnoxious that we want Julia to get
as far away from him as possible. He's a controlling and overbearing
asshole who gaslights Julia by playing the role of the vulnerable
immigrant and manipulatively playing on her fear of being labelled a
racist when she dares to call out his "Mexican machismo." Pedro behaves
like an annoying clown while working, purposely needling co-workers into
starting fights. Tired of his behaviour, the chef (Lee Sellars)
gives Pedro three strikes, and we find ourselves willing him to hit all
three so we don't have to endure his presence for the whole movie.
If Ruizpalacios wants to highlight the plight of Latin-American immigrants
in the US, he couldn't have picked a worse figure to represent them.
Far more winning a presence is Diaz's Estela, who initially seems to be
posited as the protagonist until the movie pushes her aside in favour of
the far less engaging Pedro and Julia. Having worked in one of Mexico's
top restaurants, Estela is the classic case of an immigrant forced to work
well below her station.
But Ruizpalacios has little interest in his female characters. Set in what
appears to be the 1990s, the movie is filled with the sort of misogynistic
banter that is no longer accepted in western workplaces, and the women
(chiefly represented by the waitresses who come down to the kitchen in
search of their orders) are forced to grit their teeth and take it. The
most developed female character is Mara's Julia, but she's reduced to a
vessel for the drama growing in her tummy.
La Cocina is a largely irksome experience, all overcooked
drama, mostly of the "Angry Young Man" variety that was at its height when
Wesker penned his play but which today's audiences now have little
patience for. It's occasionally enlivened by some technical wizardry, like
an extended one-take tracking shot that ends up with the kitchen floor
flooded with cherry coke. But despite its lengthy runtime we never really
get a sense of who any of its characters are beyond their ethnicities (the
Mexican, the Dominican, the American etc), and we certainly never believe
we're watching anything remotely resembling a working kitchen. If
La Cocina were an eatery it would be the sort with laminated
menus, and it's unlikely you'd want to stick around for dessert.
La Cocina is in UK/ROI cinemas
from March 28th.
