Reviewed on February 16th at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival – Main Competition. 139 Mins
Cast: Rooney Mara, Raúl Briones, Anna Diaz
Genre: Drama, Romance, Thriller
Director: Alonso Ruizpalacios
In Irish Cinemas: 28th March 2025
There is an electrifying vitality pulsing through every frame of Alonso Ruizpalacios’ La Cocina. At times exuberant, but more often teetering on the edge of chaos—if not outright catastrophe—it’s a film that crackles with tension, evoking the relentless energy of The Bear on overdrive. This is a bruising, high-intensity tragicomedy that rips back the curtain on the frenetic world of a Times Square restaurant, exposing the unseen struggles, simmering resentments, and volatile pressures that define the back-of-house experience.
Ruizpalacios directs with an unmistakable sense of style, immersing the viewer in a sensory overload of lush black-and-white cinematography, razor-sharp editing, and a strikingly eclectic soundtrack that swings between solemn choral arrangements and chaotic bursts of jazz. While the film’s climax leans a little too heavily into operatic excess, its core remains a powerful vision of the immigrant experience—portraying the kitchen not just as a workplace but as a purgatory, where even the supposed anchors of community, camaraderie, and love can prove to be fleeting illusions.
With Güeros, Museo, and A Cop Movie (all Berlin prize winners), Ruizpalacios has demonstrated a deep affinity for French New Wave aesthetics and the offbeat sensibilities of American indie cinema while also displaying a documentarian’s eye for social reality. His fourth feature, loosely inspired by Arnold Wesker’s 1957 play The Kitchen, distils these influences into a raw, kinetic exploration of labour, ambition, and survival. At its heart is a Thoreauvian meditation on work as a soul-crushing barrier to one’s dreams—perhaps even life itself.
The film’s entrancing opening sequence introduces us to Estela (Anna Díaz), a young Mexican immigrant who newly arrived in New York, as she navigates the city’s labyrinthine transit system, making her way from the Staten Island Ferry to The Grill, a bustling, tourist-heavy franchise restaurant. Encouraged by a woman from her hometown to seek out her son Pedro (Raúl Briones) for a job, Estela arrives unannounced and manages to talk her way into a position on the production line. She’s underage, undocumented, and inexperienced—yet she’s immediately absorbed into the chaotic rhythm of the kitchen.
Cinematographer Juan Pablo Ramírez’s fluid tracking shots follow Estela as she weaves through the restaurant’s narrow corridors, reinforcing the film’s relentless momentum. The camera, as much as the actors, tells the story, moving with an urgency that mirrors the pressure cooker environment.
Ruizpalacios quickly sketches out the ensemble of characters orbiting Estela, each balancing personal struggles with the demands of their gruelling shifts. There’s the autocratic, temperamental Chef (Lee R. Sellars), who keeps order through threats and explosions of rage. Accountant Mark (James Waterston) discovers $800 missing from the previous night’s earnings, setting off a tense search for the culprit. And Pedro himself, an unpredictable mix of charisma and volatility, whose rivalry with fellow cook Max (Spenser Granese) nearly turned violent the day before. Meanwhile, waitress Julia (Rooney Mara), Pedro’s sometime lover, has made the difficult decision to terminate her pregnancy—a choice Pedro refuses to accept.
In La Cocina, the relentless pressure of the kitchen is embodied by the autocratic Chef (Lee R. Sellars), who rules with outbursts of rage and constant threats of firing his subordinates. Yet, despite his efforts to maintain order, the environment teeters on the edge of chaos. The precarious balance is completely upended when a malfunctioning soda dispenser floods the kitchen with cherry Coke, turning an already volatile workspace into pure disorder. The Grill’s rigid hierarchy—from its owner, Rashid (Oded Fehr), to the lowly busboy, Raton (Esteban Caicedo)—mirrors the broader societal struggles outside its walls, particularly the uphill battle of trying to move even a single rung up the economic ladder.
At the centre of this microcosm is Pedro, a character as magnetic as he is exasperating. Played with raw energy by A Cop Movie lead Raúl Briones, Pedro is a walking contradiction: a charming jokester, an incorrigible romantic, and an abrasive hothead prone to picking fights. His unpredictable nature injects much of the film’s dynamism, particularly in scenes with Julia, his sometime lover and coworker. One moment, he sedates her over a lobster tank in a flirtation charged with tension; the next, they steal intimate moments together in the freezer room, their attraction as combustible as the environment around them.
In a more ensemble-driven performance than outright leading, Rooney Mara gives Julia a quiet strength, balancing her emotions for Pedro with the clear-eyed pragmatism of a woman who knows she can’t afford to make reckless choices. Already burdened with responsibilities, she refuses to lose sight of her agency. While Pedro clings to the belief that their unborn child might be the one good thing to emerge from the toxic kitchen, Julia remains painfully aware of reality—the relentless struggle for survival that defines the lives of most of their colleagues.
That same struggle becomes the catalyst for deeper tensions when Pedro and Julia’s need to raise $800 for an abortion makes him the prime suspect in a presumed theft. The suspicion gnaws at him, fraying what little composure he has left. At the same time, he latches onto Rashid’s vague promise to help secure his legal residency in the U.S., a promise that his coworkers dismiss as just another empty platitude. Their scepticism only deepens Pedro’s desperation, pushing him closer to the edge.
Ruizpalacios’ direction thrives on feverish energy, and La Cocina often risks overwhelming its audience with its relentless pace. But he wisely inserts a much-needed pause just over an hour into the film. In a rare moment of stillness, Pedro, along with Moroccan lesbian Samira (Soundos Mosbah) and easygoing Brooklyn-born dessert chef Nonzo (Motell Foster), retreats to a back alley for a smoke and a beer after the lunch rush. Their conversation drifts to dreams and aspirations—the illusion of money as a cure-all, the longing for love and stability. Nonzo recounts a story of an Italian immigrant’s arrival at Ellis Island, delivering a sobering reflection on the idea that disappearing might be the only true escape.
Not every narrative detour lands. A scene involving a homeless man (John Piper-Ferguson) seeking a meal veers into overly scripted territory, leading to a heated altercation between Pedro and the Chef. But the film regains its footing as Pedro’s inevitable breakdown nears. “That guy is a fucking time bomb,” warns Samira, and when Pedro finally explodes, the moment feels both shocking and inevitable. The final spark? The sheer exhaustion of Laura (Laura Gómez), a tough Dominican waitress just trying to survive her first day on the job, whose justified impatience is enough to tip Pedro over the edge.
Even as La Cocina leans into theatrical flourishes, occasionally betraying its stage-play origins, it remains an arresting exploration of the dehumanising nature of labour. Its characters, caught in an endless cycle of drudgery, grasp for hope in a system designed to grind them down. And yet, in the closing shots, a speck of colour emerges—a quiet but undeniable assertion of resilience in the face of what Thoreau once called “this incessant business.”
Overall: 7.5/10
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