La Cocina is adapted from British Playwright Arnold Wesker’s The Kitchen and this version, while shot in Mexico, crosses the border into the world’s metropolis, New York City. The restaurant is already a busy tourist trap at the corner of Times Square and serves typical American cuisine made by a host of illegal immigrants. The lunch rush on a Friday is already stressing out the employees of The Grill and the accountant has to set Luis, the manager, on a hunt for the person who took around $800 dollars from the till. Like a lot of restaurants in America, this kitchen has many cooks from different countries, including some undocumented immigrants who are just trying to make ends meet. And this group of employees immediately becomes the suspects. Among this new group of immigrants is Estela, a new cook who has extensive skill but needs to start immediately and is thrust into the chaos of the lunch rush with no time to learn. The already polarizing and bewildering experience of entering a new country is only amplified by the chaos of her new employment.
The missing money puts undue pressure on all of the employees. All of them know that, if the owner Rashid wishes, they could get reported to I.C.E and would be leaving America. Among these anxious workers is the energetic and exuberant Pedro, a skilled cook who is already on edge with the staff for getting into fight with their white line cook, Max. The missing money, however, seems to concern Pedro the least of anyone else. He seems a lot more concerned with Julia (Rooney Mara), one of the white waitresses at the Grill who is pregnant with his baby. The two are not in a serious relationship. There is certainly some connection and tension between them, but Julia is determined to get an abortion and move on with her life. Pedro, on the other hand, seems focused on a dream that all of the illegal immigrant cooks have, which is to get their papers in order and get their green card. Pedro wants Julia to be part of that dream but the tension over the abortion and his secret wish to keep it is causing a lot of tension between them. Pedro does relent and gives Julia $800 to help pay for the abortion but that blessing soon becomes a curse as that is the same amount of money that was taken from the till.
The film is presented in black and white, becoming another film that uses black and white to present a contemporary setting (Better Call Saul, Paris 13th District, Frances Ha, Memento) its use here is perhaps not as clear like it is in Frances Ha. Better Call Saul and Memento have used it to contrast different parts of the stories timeline. Here there is something cold, something brooding that hangs over the film. In its characters and the setting there is a great sense of interiority, of being trapped. There is a shot that ends up showing a video games animation which is the perspective of a person walking through a maze of brick walls, they find no exit, they make no progress. You get the feeling this represents the experience of the immigrant cooks who needed to move here, to escape some conflict but now are stuck between a rock and a hard place. No one is more upset at that situation then Pedro, he tries his best to find a way out. After 3 years, he still throws himself into everything he can, he resists the trap he seems to be in by trying to find love, be kind and to still do things that give him the energy that the others around him might not have. He is the one who starts the conversation asking his fellow cooks what their dream is, what do they long for. This is something that I’ve found synomous with immigrant characters, there is always a longing, they migrated to try to fulfill this longing. Pedro gets lots of different answers, his is escape, to disappear and take those he loves with him. His relationship with Julia appears to be about getting a green card but it becomes clear that while Julia found him as an exciting fling, he is serious and throws his heart towards her. The moments that include color are when his relationship with Julia is at the forefront of his mind. These burn into the viewers head and are just a few of the striking images the film produces, many of which invite the viewer to interrupt. The film is able to pull off a remarkable feat, it is able to include images, visuals and ideas that seem natural to the story. There is often a cheap feeling when a film cuts to a irrelevant image of animal to symbolize aggression or flowers to symbolize peace. Here director is able to include these interesting images within the confines of a film that mostly takes place around one location, a remarkable achievement in any film let alone a play adaptation.
Competing with The Brutalist for being one of the most creative presentations of arriving in America, the films opening sequences follows Estella arriving on a boat and heading into the streets of New York City. There is a unique blurring effect applied to the frame, it’s not blurry like in Chungking Express but more impressiontic, like brush strokes applied on to celluloid. It really helps the film establish its creative presentation and the empty feeling of going into the unknown.
The film often feels like we are entering a different world. That becomes even more pronounced in scenes where realistic incidents turn the kitchen into a world of chaos. The images that are created and the chaos in the movement in these scenes is emphasized by some impressive long takes, including one in the middle of the film that is particularly impressive. (In fact, it threatens to best the long take from the penultimate of episode of The Bear‘s first season.) The film’s use of a 4:3 square-like aspect ratio also helps to emphasize the claustrophobic feeling that the characters are experiencing. During the lunch rush, the constant rush of order tickets coming out of the machine is the insistent demand for these workers to do more than what is reasonable, yet they keep having to meet that standard. They chug beers to deal with it. (I do have to mention that the version that I viewed did not have subtitles and about half of this film is in Spanish. So there is a some context I certainly missed out on.)
I appreciate the film’s commentary about the absurdity of illegal immigration. There is a purposeful moment where a man thinks about how Time Square used to have native people on it. The complete removal of nature in a place like that emphasizes the disconnection New York City has with land. It also emphasizes how this land was never really lived on by the Americans, who now claim to own it. Ironically, along with the rest, the owner and manager are immigrants themselves who are all trying to make the most of the myth of American opportunity. The actual longings of other characters other than Pedro are mostly swept up by the dream of thriving by earning money towards the better life. Yet, no one in the restaurant, from the owner to the new cook with no place to stay, seems to have connection to something more meaningful than money.
There is an appreciation of food in the film as well. As part of his resistance to the obsession around money in the restaurant, he takes time to use the food in the restaurant to make elevated food for people. The first time that he does it for Julia, he literally forces her to stop eating her food and gives her the hand crafted sandwich he made. Later in the film, a homeless man who is friends with the owner and has helped him out comes in. Pedro takes on the task to feed him as a thank you from the owner, giving him a nice meal of lobster. This is particularly meaningful because earlier in the film he makes a rant about how everyone should be able to have lobster and that it only became expensive because, one day, a person decided it should become a delicacy that is now the symbol of wealth, when before they were merely the chicken of the sea.
La Cocina is available in theatres on Friday, December 6th, 2024.
