Anyone who recently looked for cuisine in the cinema experienced a feast like no other. In the romantic drama Beloved Cook, which started a few weeks ago, we are served around 140 minutes of the most delicious dishes, all prepared with the greatest care. You can’t get enough of it on the treats. A cinematic pleasure that also comes across as completely relaxing. Quite the opposite to La Cocina.
The US-Mexican co-production in competition at the Berlinale 2024 shares the running time and a look into the kitchen with Beloved Chef. But at this point the similarities end. Where we could just lose ourselves in the sensuality of cooking, Pure stress awaits us now – like bingeing half a season of The Bear: King of the Kitchen in the cinema.
Berlinale highlight 2024: La Cocina takes you into the roaring kitchen of a New York tourist trap
The first images of La Cocina already contain a stirring unrest when we arrive in pulsating New York with the young Estela (Anna Diaz). Director Alonso Ruizpalacios roams the streets with his camera unleashed distorts all movements before our eyes. At times, entering La Cocina feels like a late echo of Wong Kar-Wai’s exhilarating Chungking Express.
This is by no means the only style that Ruizpalacios uses in his rousing kitchen epic. Elaborate plan sequences, which are reminiscent of Alfonso Cuarón, are just as much a part of his film language as the play with colors and aspect ratios. Most of the time we find ourselves in narrow black and white images. Every now and then the claustrophobic kitchen world opens up and the picture becomes wider.
The center of the film is The Grill, a tourist trap that becomes a symbol of New York. Just like the city that never sleeps, peace never returns to the restaurant. The fire in the kitchen must not go out, otherwise the world will stand still. Estela joins the illegal immigrant workers who keep the shop running invisibly in the background while the tourists devour their lobsters.
These are prepared by Pedro (Raúl Briones Carmona), a young man who is bursting with energy and is hoping to get a residence permit from the stress of the kitchen. His dreams continue. He is in love with Julia (Rooney Mara), one of the restaurant’s waitresses, and wants to build a life with her. But Pedro is a ticking time bomb that threatens to explode at any moment.
Uncut Gems meets Birdman: La Cocina is pure stress cinema and operates at the heart of America
Ruizpalacios translates Pedro’s inner ticking into this nerve-wracking beeps a machine that sounds every time an order comes into the kitchen. A small, electronic box sets a rhythm that it is impossible for mere mortals to keep up with. A theft causes additional tension: just over $800 has been missing from the cash register since yesterday. Everyone is under suspicion.
Ruizpalacios has completely internalized the hectic hustle and bustle of The Bear. His work can easily compete with the stress levels of films like Uncut Gems and Birdman. Something happens all the time medium-sized disaster. And just when we naively believe that everything is running smoothly, at least for a brief moment, it turns out that the entire kitchen is under water.
We couldn’t be further from a place of enjoyment. At La Cocina Every character fights for survival. We’re not dealing with a culinary horror thriller à la The Menu, in which a visit to a restaurant turns into a social experiment with deadly consequences. But Ruizpalacios also uses the kitchen to negotiate the state of America.
With every beep, an American dream dies, is suffocated, slain. Nevertheless, the fat sizzles in the pans, water boils in the pots and countless knives move quickly across cutting surfaces. As if the madness of orders that has come in could somehow be tamed. But he can’t do that. Business runs smoothly until the worst possible escalation brings it to a complete standstill.
In La Cocina, dreams are destroyed every minute, but there is a green glimmer of hope
With the knowledge of this steamy nightmare you never really want to go into a restaurant again. Ruizpalacios stages a tour de force through the hidden depths of the kitchen, which becomes a mirror of an unequal world. No one can follow the unjust rules to live – but what kind of life? For what dreams that you won’t be ripped out of at the next beep?
In search of the green glimmer of hope on the horizon, we rush through the labyrinthine corridors of the restaurant complex that seems to lead to the heart of New York. And then, in the midst of all the restlessness, Ruizpalacios finds an absolute magical imagepossibly the most magical of the entire Berlinale: Rooney Mara stands behind an aquarium that is currently being filled with fresh lobsters.
The animals are roughly poured from a large bucket into the container and slowly slide to the ground. As if they were weightless. For a fraction of a second, Mara also absorbs the fairytale world that is emerging before our eyes. The boundaries of space and time seem to be dissolved here. All dreams possible. But there is an impulsive, injured force in La Cocina that cannot allow this fantasy to exist under any circumstances.
La Cocina is in competition at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival. A German cinema release has not yet been determined.