La Cocina Review: Behind the Doors of The Grill

Alonso Ruizpalacios brings a bold new flavor to the rapidly expanding genre of kitchen dramas with La Cocina. Though the Mexican director is relatively unknown to mainstream American audiences, cinephiles might remember his inventive heist film Museo, which explored Mexico’s complicated relationship with its own history.

In tackling La Cocina, Ruizpalacios returned to his roots as a London dishwasher, drawing inspiration from the hectic, high-stakes world behind the swinging doors. His loose adaptation of Arnold Wesker’s 1957 play The Kitchen infuses the source material with timely themes of immigrant exploitation in New York’s ruthless restaurant industry.

Yet Ruizpalacios also mines the connections and clashes between La Cocina’s melting pot of line cooks, prepping his script with equal parts brotherly bonds and macho posturing. Fans of the emerging kitchen drama genre spearheaded by The Bear and Boiling Point are sure to devour this spicy take, simmering with kinetic filmmaking to match its existential angst.

As the saccharine pop music fades and the first ticket spits out in La Cocina’s industrial fortress of stainless steel, we sense we’re in for a wholly original ride from an unheralded auteur. Strap on your aprons and prepare your palates, folks.

Simmering Tensions Boil Over

The sizzling chaos of La Cocina revolves around Pedro, played with electrifying intensity by Raúl Briones. As an undocumented line cook at The Grill in Times Square, Pedro channels his outsized dreams and talents into spinning magic behind the scenes. He’s desperate to prove his worth to the restaurant’s slippery owner Rashid (Oded Fehr), believing it will help him secure legal working papers.

But Pedro’s cocksure bravado also makes him enemies, including the humorless head chef (Lee R. Sellars) who seems perennially ready to boil over. His true soft spot is for Julia (Rooney Mara), a seen-it-all waitress carrying his unborn child. She spurns Pedro’s attempts to make their relationship more than a supply closet fling, focused solely on scraping up enough money for an abortion.

Tensions ignite when several hundred dollars goes missing from The Grill’s registers, implicating Pedro in the minds of colleagues already envious of his rapport with Rashid. As suspicions mount, a wicked game of telephone ensues between the dining room’s privileged servers and the immigrants manning the hot line.

In the lead-up to the manic Friday lunch shift, personal dramas collide with professional urgency. Pedro pleads for Julia to reconsider the pregnancy, fanning the flames with head chef in the process. We sense the pressure cooker about to explode.

In an operatic blowout scene, Pedro finally detonates, hurling curses that seem to give voice to The Grill’s oppressed kitchen workers. But there are casualties in his scorched earth meltdown, with jobs threatened and bonds severed. For Pedro, long-simmering questions of identity, purpose and belonging boil over in this foreign land he once saw as a beacon of opportunity.

Simmering the Melting Pot

Beneath its eye-popping pyrotechnics, La Cocina tackles resonant themes of exploitation and toxic masculinity with nuance. Ruizpalacios steeps his film in the irony of America’s “land of opportunity” promises, built on the backs of an invisible immigrant workforce.

The Grill’s gleaming metal galley is New York’s real melting pot, where Spanish and Arabic dance around English as the lingua franca. Here, the American Dream boils down to the scramble for better tips, longer hours, and maybe a visa sponsor if you kiss enough boot leather.

Ruizpalacios illuminates complex power dynamics through his ensemble. We empathize with Julia’s pragmatic choices, Pedro’s quixotic ambition, Rashid’s capricious authority. There are no easy heroes or villains in this murky moral universe.

Moments of grace emerge between battles, where comrades break bread and share cigarettes like war-weary soldiers. La Cocina celebrates the resilience of outsiders, finding humor and harmony amid shared sacrifice. As Pedro declares, “We might be fucked up, but at least we’re fucked up together.”

The kinetic interplay between ensemble and auteur yields spectacular results. Cinematographer Juan Pablo Ramírez casts most of the film in austere black-and-white, punctuated by expressionistic slow motion and symbolic pops of color. Feverish editing and theatrical flourishes capture the mental pressure cooker of lunch service, with all bets off in the rapturous final act.

Yet the style never overwhelms the substance. For all its operatic extremes, La Cocina keeps its eyes locked on the humanity at stake in Pedro’s quixotic last stand. Beneath the braggadocio and bravura lies a sympathetic portrait of marginalized men raging against their own powerlessness.

Leads Who Leave a Lasting Impression

In the talented hands of Raúl Briones, Pedro bristles with bravado yet radiates vulnerability. He’s a lover and a fighter, as quick to toss out a crushing insult as an impassioned ode. Pedro wears the mantle of macho chef with predictable bluster, but his tenderness for Julia suggests a more progressive heart.

We root for Pedro as the underdog, while realizing his obstacles are largely self-constructed. His eagerness to please Rashid, despite all evidence of exploitation, becomes a tragic flaw. But when backed into a corner, Pedro unleashes a righteous rage—a cathartic release giving voice to so many voiceless immigrants.

As his counterweight, Rooney Mara brings flinty edge to Julia’s seen-it-all wisdom. She too has been down rocky roads, sizing up Pedro’s schemes with over-it exasperation. Yet their off-hour moments reveal genuine care beneath Julia’s no-nonsense exterior. We sense the tough choices she’s made to retain control over her destiny amid circumstances beyond her power.

Among the colorful supporting players, Nonzo emerges as the sage elder. The Zen-like pastry chef dispenses nuggets of insight along with desserts, his lyrical monologues adding shades of poetry. Meanwhile lethal glares from the crisp-headed head chef remind us of the capricious gods who rule The Grill’s mythical underworld.

By the messy end, Ruizpalacios has steered us to empathy for all combatants in La Cocina’s emotional arena. There are no simple villains within those swinging doors—just men and women fighting not to drown in the deep waters of American industry.

Alchemy Behind the Lens

Cinematographer Juan Pablo Ramírez casts his imaginative lens on the chaos with style and substance. Shot largely in gorgeously textured black-and-white, La Cocina resembles an anarchist’s dream of Metropolis. Ramirez wields his camera with balletic grace, the fluid takes mirroring the intricate kitchen choreography.

When the lens ventures outside The Grill’s steely fortress, daylight washes faces in revelation. Pedro and Julia steal moments by a whimsical lobster tank, finding suspended beauty amid gritty realities.

Ruizpalacios alternates aspect ratios like courses, widening the frame when relief arrives from claustrophobic pressure. The transitions signify the pendulum swing between individuation and community in tight quarters.

But the pièce de résistance comes during the infamous Friday lunch surge, captured in a bravura 12-minute oner. Weaving between bodies and sizzling pans, the careening camera becomes a stand-in for the viewer, reeling at the coordinated madness. It’s a technical showstopper, as graceful as a Scorsese tracking shot.

Equally impressive are subtle symbolic touches, like flickers of rainbow light offering glimpses of Pedro’s idealism, or lenses blurring with ghostly faces from his Mexican past. Meanwhile, intricate foley work ensures no sauce simmers or blade chops without resonance.

By la cocina’s close, Ramírez’s lens basks the survivors in magic hour relief. They smoke, laugh, cry, breathing freedom however fleeting. After the symphonic chaos of The Grill, we emerge reborn through Ruizpalacios’ raw yet ravishing craft.

A New Classic Is Served

Like a stellar meal, La Cocina lingers long after the plates are cleared. Alonso Ruizpalacios has whipped up a kitchen drama both innovative and classic, blending theatrical bravura with social realism. He steeps vintage tropes in modern anxieties, serving up a timeless fable about exploited laborers seeking dignity.

In the process, Ruizpalacios announces himself as a directorial talent to watch. His daring stylistic flourishes never overwhelm the humanity at La Cocina’s core. We ache for Pedro’s quixotic dreams and Julia’s resilience, as much as their undocumented comrades.

The film deserves to be savored for its craftsmanship and catharsis. With its potent themes resonating ever louder, La Cocina is primed for a long run in the cultural conversation. Like other contemporary masterworks about marginalized communities—The Wire, Parasite, Atlanta—it wields kinetic style in service of stark truths.

Ruizpalacios has crafted both an audacious spectacle and a sympathetic snapshot of America’s simmering underclass. La Cocina leaves viewers nourished, intrigued, and eager to pass the word about an outsider artist poised to shake up the mainstream.

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