Alonso Ruizpalacios’ La Cocina puts its titular setting in the forefront, getting inevitable comparisons to The Bear. And there’s two ways of looking at the events that occur here, one being that this kind of work is a roller coaster. Some good things happening to our protagonist Pedro (Raul Briones) cancel out the bad stuff. The other is that everything that happens to him leads to an inevitable conclusion. Let’s talk about these events though, as it partially involves fellow Mexican, Estela (Anna Diaz). Getting a job at The Grill, the crass New York tourist trap where Pedro works, she gives him pictures of his family back home in Mexico, which can make him understandably feel two ways. The pictures  may feel either happy or homesick, which may make him feel good or bad about his current work life.

Pedro is in a new but passionate romance with Julia (Rooney Mara), one of the waitresses at The Grill. He gives her enough money to abort their baby even if he pleads for her to keep it. Coincidentally, there is more than $800 missing from one of the tills, and both are prime suspects for stealing the money. Pedro’s inclination to fight and fraternize with fellow staff members gets under probation, where he gets three more strikes. Even with his probation, he tries to do good things, but his bosses don’t see his actions as good. Through Pedro, viewers feel La Cocina‘s subversive ethos, where even an undocumented man acts like a free American.

It’s strange to call La Cocina a film about America even if Pedro keeps saying “America is not a country”. One can interpret its version of America as either a dysfunctional state or one that’s purposefully oppressive. It juxtaposes its scenes bearing in mind that working in a kitchen has the same contradictions as American capitalism. One scene shows Pedro, Nonzo (Motell Gyn Foster), and others doing what they would between lunch and supper customer rushes. Half of them are throwing out garbage and the other half are goofing around. It then cuts from that scene to a middle management worker interrogating Julia, the interrogation style assumes that she and Pedro are guilty. Credit is, by the way, due to Rooney Mara who gives Julia the expected proletarian toughness, giving her all to a deep cut that more people need to see.

La Cocina is an adaptation of a 1950s play The Kitchen, about a mix of white Americans and European immigrants. This newer adaptation casts a wider net, depicting immigrants from Mexico, Latin America, and even someone from North Africa. Ruizpalacios’ film is mostly in English but seamlessly weaves in Spanish and French, which one can hear in cities. The languages feel like their own characters here, and one can say the same about the visuals as well. Ruizpalacios mostly shoots the film in black and white and in fullscreen, which would otherwise give the film claustrophobia. It strangely has the opposite effect a sit captures how big the restaurant is, but that doesn’t make it less like a prison.

Watch La Cocina in select Canadian theatres.