Latest news with #AlonsoRuizpalacios
NZ Herald
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
La Cocina best served in-cinema for glimpse into exciting, exhausting NY restaurant life
Director Alonso Ruizpalacios, left, alongside striking Mexican actor Raúl Briones, right, at a 'La Cocina' press conference in Mexico. Photo / Getty Images La Cocina, directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios, is in cinemas now. Set during the lunchtime rush of a bustling New York restaurant, La Cocina portrays the hurly-burly of the kitchen, blending personal drama with warm-hearted camaraderie, dashed with swear words hurled in the mother tongues of its immigrant staff. Central to the story is boozing troublemaker Pedro (striking Mexican actor Raúl Briones), one of several undocumented cooks employed in the famous tourist trap. His arrogant antics are wearing thin. 'Three strikes and you're out!' bellows Lee Sellars' head chef as Pedro takes unscheduled smoko breaks and mucks up meal orders. Chief among Pedro's distractions is Julia (Rooney Mara) a self-possessed waitress with her own problems. The film is loosely based on Arnold Wesker's 1957 play The Kitchen, and though this updated cast wears modern-day sneakers and hoodies, Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios maintains the old-fashioned feel of a Times Square institution, where staff smoke as they slave over hot stoves and make calls from payphones, not cellphones. Adding to its throwback charm, La Cocina is shot in beautifully crisp black and white photography, illuminating the natural performances by a superb cast of mostly unknowns representing an authentically diverse immigrant community. Tensions boil over during a scene with cooks and servers humorously cursing each other out in their florid local slang, while Max, the sole white monolingual American chef, angrily despairs. It's not quite Boiling Point or The Bear but things do get stressful – pounding sound design adds to an intense scene shot in one long take in which everything that can go wrong seemingly does. The script's stage origins are evident in a couple of theatrical moments: a soliloquy in the meat freezer, and the occasional earnest monologue between workers. Brought to the screen, however, the melodramatic aspects are mitigated by the stunning monochrome cinematography. Amidst the companionship and cuisine some vaguely surreal moments still somehow feel in keeping with the overall tone. La Cocina is best served as an in-cinema experience, for immersion in an exciting, exhausting, behind-the-scenes world. Rating out of five:★★★★
ABC News
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
La Cocina shows the chaotic lives of undocumented migrants working in the underbelly of US commercial kitchens
Translating from Spanish to mean 'the kitchen', the title of Mexican writer-director Alonso Ruizpalacios's latest work reflects its central preoccupation: undocumented Hispanic migrants who seek to better their lives in the underbelly of American commercial kitchens. What: 24 hours inside the pressure cooker that is a commercial kitchen staffed mostly by undocumented migrants. Directed by: Alonso Ruizpalacios Starring: Raúl Briones, Rooney Mara, Anna Díaz, Motell Foster Where: In cinemas now Likely to make you feel: Struck by its interludes of beauty, but mostly stressed Times Square tourist trap The Grill is the site of our focus, and we follow Estela Ramos (Anna Díaz) as she haphazardly navigates the subway system and American employment practices armed with a smattering of English and the name of someone who'll purportedly be able to get her a job: a fellow Mexican chef by the name of Pedro (the heart of the film, played by a mercurial Raúl Briones). But something is up at The Grill. More than $800 went missing from the cash register the night before, and management is in a frenzy. Certain it was one of their precariously employed staff, management takes to interrogating each and every one of them. Meanwhile, Pedro's American waiter girlfriend, Julia (a striking Rooney Mara), is pregnant with his child and at odds with what she wants to do about it. Severely homesick and hopeful that this child is the best thing that may happen to him, Pedro gives Julia money while beseeching her to not get an abortion. All the while, orders keep spitting out of a receipt printer — evoking The Bear (I'm sorry, it had to be mentioned sooner or later). Dishes get forgotten, food is perilously dropped, equipment malfunctions (resulting in one of the more surreal scenes of the film), food burns, tempers are lost. It's impossible to write about La Cocina — shot entirely in black-and-white except for a few key moments — without referencing Juan Pablo Ramírez's stunning camera work and exquisite framing of the film's subjects. Reflecting Estela's discombobulation in the film's first few scenes, the slow-motion shots are juddering and gauzy, culminating in a feeling of being sick and adrift. Once she finds The Grill, the camera stills, favouring rapid to-and-fros between various people — heightening the urgency. There are close-ups of a sandwich being assembled with the utmost care (unlike the miscellaneous dishes on the restaurant menu), of people chewing, of a viscous substance dripping off meat. Food is rendered into something almost abject — reduced to the basest, most primal desires of the people consuming it. This is perhaps reflective of the hospitality industry, where questionable ethics underpin aspirational dining experiences entirely divorced from the people who produce them. Slicing through the scenes are Tomás Barreiro's majestic score and Javier Umpierrez's dramatic sound design. Every noise, thud and reverberation — water gurgling from a soft drink dispenser, meat cleaved into thick slivers, the din of playful cusses — is magnified to exacerbate the claustrophobia of being in a small kitchen. Often, this reflects the inner chaos of the characters — a soothing chant is disrupted by discordant instruments as Pedro descends into a state of crisis. Swathes of the film are cloaked in silence as characters monologue or in moments of extreme tension. A hierarchy of sorts becomes evident in The Grill, where undocumented migrants from places like Mexico, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Morocco butt up against an American underclass. Spanish is the lingua franca of the kitchen, while English is spoken in the restaurant's public façade. The restaurant's manager is a second-generation migrant, himself the son of undocumented migrants. In the kitchen, men occupy a position of supremacy over the women; female waiters are sexualised and Pedro's rapscallion quality gives way to coercive streaks of cruelty and violence when he's under pressure. This dynamic is complicated through Pedro and Julia's relationship. Julia is a white American citizen, but her womanhood imperils her. Pedro has no legal rights in America and speaks in a tongue foreign to him; in a memorable scene, he tells Julia: "I have to cry in English because you will not come to me. I have to come to you always." Yet he also exemplifies the dominance of the patriarchy. Legal papers are dangled over Pedro like a carrot, but he will never obtain them. The entire kitchen crew are in varying positions of stasis, doomed to repeat the same movements day after day without any hope of escape or ascendancy. The American Dream is such; an enduring hope that powers the economy while fatally depleting those who dare believe in it. The arrested scope of La Cocina and the highly stylised and choreographed formations of actors as they cook, dish and serve is reminiscent of a play, so it's not surprising that this film is loosely based on Arnold Wesker's 1957 British play 'The Kitchen'. But the medium of film is employed adroitly to capture that which theatre cannot. The phone through which Pedro calls his family in Mexico becomes a portal through which he can see and hear his home. The most transcendent scene of the film occurs when Pedro and Julia lock eyes through a lobster tank to the baleful tune of Lee Hazlewood's 'Your Sweet Love'. Pedro is a "f***ing time bomb" in one character's words, and the same could be said of La Cocina. The escalating pressure needs a release valve, and we see the film reach its fateful end in a single-take, 10-minute final sequence. It's breathtakingly gripping, simultaneously horrible and cathartic. La Cocina is in cinemas now.
The Guardian
30-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
La Cocina review – Rooney Mara stars in overstuffed New York kitchen drama
Mexican writer-director Alonso Ruizpalacios, best known for his acclaimed hybrid documentary-thriller A Cop Movie, taps into current audience appetites for frazzled, behind-the-scenes restaurant kitchen dramas with his latest picture. Like The Menu and TV series The Bear, this stylish but exhausting film serves up more than just an insight into an intense working environment. La Cocina, loosely based on Arnold Wesker's 1957 play The Kitchen, is kinetically shot in striking black and white and unfolds over a stressful day in the kitchen of a busy Times Square tourist trap. It's about the undocumented migrant experience and the illusive nature of dreams, American and otherwise. Central to the drama is a missing $800 and the strained romance between hot-headed Mexican chef Pedro (Raúl Briones) and American waitress Julia (Rooney Mara). Parts of it are excellent: there's a propulsive, unpredictable energy to the kitchen during the midday rush; the direction, and the agile choreography of cast and camera, are breathtaking. But the exaggerated staginess and histrionic screeching start to grate long before this overstuffed meal is finished. In UK and Irish cinemas
