#‘La Cocina’ Review: Rooney Mara in Explosive Account of Immigrant Restaurant Workers Chasing the American Dream

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. Think The Bear on cocaine with a Red Bull chaser and you get some idea of the sustained intensity and simmering pressure of this bruising tragicomedy about what the diners (mostly) don’t see during a working day in a busy Times Square restaurant.

The Mexican writer-director has style to burn, evident in the intoxicatingly textured black-and-white visuals, the livewire editing and the striking use of music, from solemn choral pieces to cacophonous jazz. Even if he takes too long wrapping up an overwrought climactic crescendo, this is a compelling vision of the immigrant experience as a hellish limbo in which even the seeming ballast of community, brotherhood and love can be illusory.

In his previous films Güeros, Museo and A Cop Movie (all three of them Berlin prize winners), Ruizpalacios has shown an affinity for both the French New Wave and canonical American indie eccentricity, as well as a documentarian’s eye for detail. His fourth feature, loosely adapted from the 1957 play The Kitchen by English dramatist Arnold Wexler, bears traces of all those influences, while leading with the Thoreauvian concept of toil as antithetical to dreams, or even to life itself.

The seductive opening has young Mexican immigrant Estela (Anna Díaz), recently arrived in New York, navigating her way with minimal English from the Staten Island ferry by subway to The Grill, a franchise restaurant that caters to tourist traffic in the heart of Times Square. Encouraged by a woman from her hometown of Huachinango to hit up her son Pedro for a job, Estela arrives with no appointment and somehow persuades oily manager Luis (Eduardo Olmos) to give her a spot on the production line even though she’s underage. Like most of the kitchen workers, she’s also undocumented.

Cinematographer Juan Pablo Ramírez’s fluid tracking shots as Estela winds her way through the maze of corridors are mesmerizing. The camera is as instrumental in telling the story as the actors.

In short order, Ruizpalacios gives a rudimentary introduction to the various personalities alongside whom Estela will be working, while swiftly tossing up narrative balls that remain in the air throughout. Those include a crisis when accountant Mark (James Waterston) finds over $800 missing from the previous evening’s take, forcing Luis to question both front-of-house and kitchen staff; hostility between Pedro (Raúl Briones) and fellow cook Max (Spenser Granese), on whom he pulled a knife yesterday; and the decision of American waitress Julia (Rooney Mara) to terminate her pregnancy, a choice that the baby’s father, Pedro, opposes.

While the autocratic Chef (Lee R. Sellars) attempts to maintain order with fits of rage and threats of dismissal, the scene is continually on the verge of chaos. And that’s even before a soda dispenser goes on the fritz and floods the kitchen with cherry coke. The clear hierarchical delineations, from owner Rashid (Oded Fehr) down to busboy Raton (Esteban Caicedo), make for a microcosmic distillation of America outside the walls of The Grill, replete with the frustrations of trying to move even one wrung up on the ladder.

Pedro is a singularly fascinating central character, played by A Cop Movie lead Briones as a jokester, a hopeless romantic and an abrasive jerk, constantly picking fights. Much of the movie’s vitality comes directly from his performance. A scene in which he works his charms on Julia while she’s cleaning the lobster tank is as sexually charged as another in which they hook up in the freezer room.

In what’s very much an ensemble role, not an outright lead, Mara excels at balancing Julia’s feelings for Pedro with the reserve of a cool-headed woman already juggling responsibilities and sharp enough not to compromise her own needs and choices. Where Pedro clings to the idea that their child could be the only good thing to come out of their toxic workplace, Julia’s eyes remain open to reality and to the daily struggle for survival shared by most of the characters.

Still, the open secret that Pedro and Julia need to raise $800 to cover her abortion makes him the prime suspect in the presumed theft, eating away at whatever composure he can maintain. Pedro also latches onto Rashid’s promise to help get his papers sorted and give him the legal right to stay in the U.S., while his colleagues roll their eyes at that empty assurance.

La Cocina at times risks overload with its feverish pace, but Ruizpalacios makes a smart move by pausing for an extended breather a little over an hour in, as a handful of staff, including Pedro, chill Moroccan lesbian Samira (Soundos Mosbah) and easygoing Black Brooklynite dessert guy Nonzo (Motell Foster), enjoy cigarettes and beer in a side alley after the lunch rush.

They talk about their hopes and dreams, from the supposed cure-all solution of money to the comforts of a loving partner. Nonzo shares a tale of an Italian immigrant’s first encounter with America at Ellis Island, suggesting that vanishing is the only dream worth pursuing.

Ruizpalacios sacrifices some realism with an overwritten interlude involving a homeless man (John Piper-Ferguson) who wanders in looking for a meal, causing a flare-up between Chef and Pedro. But the steady buildup to Pedro’s spectacular meltdown — “That guy is a fucking time bomb,” warns Samira — is fueled by a tension that keeps you glued. It also works that the final trigger is the justified impatience of Laura (Laura Gómez), a tough Dominican waitress also in her first day on the job and just focused on getting through it.

Even if the film ultimately strays too far into virtuosic theatricality, betraying its origins, La Cocina is a gripping reflection on the dehumanizing grind of labor and the ways that its soul-crushing routines stifle hope. A tiny speck of color in the closing shots indicates the key force that endures in what Thoreau described as “this incessant business.”