La cocina | |
---|---|
Directed by | Alonso Ruizpalacios |
Screenplay by | Alonso Ruizpalacios |
Based on | The Kitchen by Arnold Wesker |
Produced by |
|
Starring |
|
Cinematography | Juan Pablo Ramirez [1] |
Edited by | Yibran Asuad |
Music by | Tomás Barreiro |
Production companies |
|
Distributed by |
|
Release dates |
|
Running time | 139 minutes [3] |
Countries |
|
Languages |
|
La cocina ( Spanish for 'The Kitchen') is a 2024 drama film written and directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios. The film is based on the 1957 stage play The Kitchen by Arnold Wesker, which was already adapted to the 1961 film The Kitchen . [4] However, while in the play and the earlier film the kitchen staff were continental European immigrants, in the present film they are mostly Latin Americans with some Arabs.
The film stars Raúl Briones, Rooney Mara, Anna Diaz, Motell Foster, Oded Fehr, Eduardo Olmos and Spenser Granese.
It had its world premiere at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival on February 16, 2024, and was released in the United States on October 25, 2024, by Willa.
Rashid, a successful Arab American entrepreneur, runs "The Grill" - a large scale Times Square tourist trap. The kitchen, located deep underground, is staffed by illegal immigrants, mostly Latin Americans with some Arabs, who must work at breakneck speed in the rush hours to fulfill the orders brought to them by the waitresses who are predominantly white Americans. Rashid regularly promises to obtain for the cooks a legal status in the US, but fails to act on such promises.
Estela, a newly arrived Hispanic immigrant who does not speak English, comes to work in "The Grill" as she know Pedro, one of the cooks, and gets introduced at record speed to its staff and the restaurant's rough ways. Pedro - a charming, hot-tempered Mexican cook - and Julia, a white American waitress, quarrel over their relationship, with some accusing Pedro of dating Julia only to get his visa. Relationships between Hispanics and "Gringos" - and specifically, between male Latin American immigrants and female "Gringas" - are a constant subject in the conversations of the kitchen staff. Julia is pregnant and is determined to get an abortion; Pedro, deeply in love with her, wants her to keep the child and engages in a fantasy of the two of them running away to an unspoiled beach in Mexico, where his son could run free on the shore. However, Pedro does get her the 800 Dollars needed for the abortion and she eventually goes through with it, alone.
After an incredibly tense first shift, where the broken soda machine causes the kitchen to flood, the employees take their break. When asked about their dreams by Pedro, Nonzo, the dessert cook, tells the strange story of an handicapped immigrant who was touched twice by an alien green light, the first time saving him from deportation. When asked about the second encounter, Nonzo says he doesn't know what he was saying.
Pedro gets in trouble - first for responding violently to a provocation by a fellow cook, then for generously giving to a hungry homeless vagrant one of the restaurant's treasured lobsters. To cap it all, $823 are reported to have disappeared from a restaurant cash register, and Pedro is suspected of being the thief as it amounts to the cost of Julia's abortion. Eventually, the lost money is discovered under a table and it turns out there was no theft. Weakened after her abortion, Julia faints in the kitchen, and Pedro is shocked to discover that Julia had concealed from him the fact that she is already a mother, raising alone the ten year old Abe.
In the final scene, Pedro goes unhinged after an altercation with a waitress, embarking on a wild rampage in both the underground kitchen and the plush restaurant upstairs - overturning tables, destroying equipment and bringing the restaurant to a standstill. Rashid confronts Pedro, asking repeatedly why he lashed out, but Pedro remains silent, covered in an eerie green light that also engulfs Estela.
In April 2022, it was announced Rooney Mara had joined the cast of the film, with Alonso Ruizpalacios directing from a screenplay he wrote. [5]
Principal photography took place in Mexico City. [6]
It had its world premiere in Competition at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival on February 16, 2024. [7] [3] In August 2024, it was announced Willa would distribute the film in the United States on October 25, 2024. [8] Cinépolis Distribución scheduled a November 7, 2024 theatrical bow in Mexico. [9]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 76% of 37 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.9/10. [10]
Robert Daniels of RogerEbert.com called the film "a monumental work of righteous anger" that "aims at the grinding, chewing machinery of not only the American dream but the remnant of the failed egalitarian promise of the industrial commerce". [11] The Hollywood Reporter 's David Rooney wrote "There's a surging life force felt in every scene of Alonso Ruizpalacios' superbly acted La Cocina — at times ebullient but more often on edge, if not careening dangerously toward disaster or violence". [12] IndieWire 's David Ehrlich gave the film a B, writing, "The more that La Cocina alternates between operatic long-takes and grease-stained close-ups, the more you can feel its characters fighting to retain their souls in the face of a parable that’s eager to cast them as collateral damage". [13] In a more critical review, Screen International 's Lee Marshall wrote "This constant striving for symbolic import sums up the issues of a maximalist drama that is full of drive, ideas and ambition, but charts no satisfying dramatic arc, and too often feels simply strident". [14]
The film was selected in Competition at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, thus it was nominated to compete for Golden Bear award.
Award | Date | Category | Recipient | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Berlin International Film Festival | February 25, 2024 | Golden Bear | Alonso Ruizpalacios | Nominated | [15] |
Raúl Rafael Carlos Juliá y Arcelay was a Puerto Rican actor. He was known for his intense and varied roles on stage and screen. He started his career in the Public Theatre before transitioning to film. He received numerous accolades including a Drama Desk Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and nominations for four Tony Awards. In 2017, The Daily Telegraph named him one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.
Paweł Aleksander Pawlikowski is a Polish filmmaker. He garnered early praise for a string of documentaries in the 1990s and for his award-winning feature films of the 2000s, Last Resort (2000) and My Summer of Love (2004). His success continued into the 2010s with Ida (2013), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Cold War (2018), for which Pawlikowski won the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, while the film received a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
The Secret of the Grain, titled Couscous in the UK, is a 2007 Franco-Tunisian drama film directed by Abdellatif Kechiche. The film stars Habib Boufares as an aging immigrant from the Maghreb whose ambition to establish a successful restaurant as an inheritance for his large and disparate family meets sceptical opposition from the French bureaucracy.
Rooney Mara Phoenix is an American actress. She has received various accolades, including nominations for two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a British Academy Film Award.
Trash is a 2014 crime drama thriller film directed by Stephen Daldry and written by Richard Curtis, based on the 2010 novel of the same name by Andy Mulligan. The film stars Rooney Mara, Martin Sheen, Wagner Moura, and Selton Mello.
Claire Burger is a French film director, film editor and screenwriter. She received the Camera d'Or award for her debut feature film Party Girl at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.
Alonso Ruizpalacios is a Mexican film director. Best known for directing the feature films Güeros (2014), Museum (2018), A Cop Movie (2021) & La cocina (2024).
The Secret Scripture is a 2016 Irish film, directed by Jim Sheridan from a screenplay by Sheridan and Johnny Ferguson, which is based on the 2008 novel of the same name by Sebastian Barry. The film stars Vanessa Redgrave, Rooney Mara, Eric Bana, Theo James, Aidan Turner, and Jack Reynor.
The Kitchen is a 1957 play by Arnold Wesker. It was Wesker's first work and is his most performed play. It has been produced in sixty cities including Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Paris, Moscow, Montreal and Zurich. The play follows the staff in a cafe's kitchen during the course of a busy morning. It has been adapted as a film twice: The Kitchen (1961) and La cocina (2024).
Inti Briones Arredondo is a cinematographer and film producer. He is known for his work in various media formats, media digital video and motion picture film. In 2013, he was named as one of Variety Magazine's "10 Cinematographers to Watch.". His work has been noted for the sensitivity with which he approaches both rural and urban locations in different parts of the world. He has worked with Chilean filmmakers such as Raúl Ruiz, José Luis Torres Leiva, Cristián Jiménez, Alejandro Fernández Almendras and Dominga Sotomayor Castillo. Briones grew up in Lima with his Chilean mother, Sybila Arredondo, widow of José María Arguedas. At the age of 15, in Peru, he entered the Armando Robles Godoy Film and Television School. In his early 20's, he moved to Santiago, Chile; although he had already taken film courses in Peru and workshops in France, he was determined to study with Héctor Ríos Henríquez, director of photography of El chacal de Nahueltoro.
Meryam Joobeur is a Tunisian Canadian film director. She is most noted for her 2018 short film Brotherhood (Ikhwène), which won the Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Short Film at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.
The Wolf House is a 2018 Chilean adult stop motion animated art film directed by Cristobal León & Joaquín Cociña and co-written with Alejandra Moffat.
A Cop Movie is a 2021 Mexican docudrama film directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios. The film stars Mónica Del Carmen and Raúl Briones.
Nite Yun is a Cambodian American chef and restaurateur. She is the owner of the Cambodian restaurant Nyum Bai in Oakland, California.
Savages is a 2001 drama film directed by Carlos Molinero based on the play of the same name by José Luis Alonso de Santos. It stars Marisa Paredes and Imanol Arias.
Supersex is a 2024 Italian biographical drama television miniseries loosely based on the life of Rocco Siffredi, a famous Italian pornographic film actor. It was released on Netflix on 6 March 2024.
From Hilde, with Love is a 2024 German biographical film about Hilde Coppi, who along with her husband Hans Coppi belonged to Red Orchestra, a German resistance group to Nazism. Directed by Andreas Dresen, the film stars Liv Lisa Fries in titular role of Hilde Coppi and Johannes Hegemann as Hans Coppi.
Dying is 2024 German comedy drama film. It is about an elderly couple on the brink of death and their two children who are too concerned with their own troubles to get involved. The film premiered at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival on 16 February 2024, and won Best Picture at the 2024 German Film Awards.
Sons is a 2024 psychological thriller co-written and directed by Gustav Möller. The film starring Sidse Babett Knudsen and Sebastian Bull is about an idealistic prison officer Eva Hansen, who faces the dilemma of her life when the murderer of her son is transferred to her prison.
Willa is an American independent film production and distribution company founded in 2017 by Elizabeth Woodward. The company has produced and distributed You Resemble Me (2021), Another Body (2023) and La cocina (2024).
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)