Among the great returns to the Berlinale this year, that of the Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios (considered a regular at the festival and twice winner of the Silver Bear, with A Cop Movie in 2022 and Museo in 2018), which goes into competition today with his first English-language film, La Cocina.
Set over the course of a single day in a bustling New York restaurant and inspired by Arnold Wesker's 1959 play The Kitchen, the film dives into the bowels of an industrial-sized restaurant kitchen in New York's Times Square. York, where food is churned out to serve mostly tourists.
A fundamentally anti-food porn film by Ruizpalacios who says: "I wanted to show the other side of the food industry where opportunity is more important than the quality of the food. In short, it is a metaphor for corporate capitalism."
Now in this monstrous, infernal restaurant, even the money has suddenly disappeared from the till and all the workers are being interrogated, particularly fragile workers because they are all illegal immigrants used to fighting every day to defend their jobs.
One of the cooks is Pedro (Raúl Briones), a young Mexican, a dreamer and troublemaker and in love with Julia (Rooney Mara), an American waitress who is not willing to commit to a relationship with an undocumented immigrant.
Now Rashid (Oded Fehr), owner of the place, has told Pedro that he will help him, but when the chef is accused of stealing the money he becomes so furious that he stops the production line in the kitchen.
"Alonso - says Rooney Mara - made us prepare extensively for this job as if we were in a real kitchen training camp for chefs and waitresses. It was an extraordinary experience".
Instead, Ruizpalacios is keen to say: "Even if one is tempted to see La Cocina as a film about immigration, its true meaning lies elsewhere. The fact that these characters are illegal immigrants is only a condition, a circumstance, a given done. But what these 'invisibles' are really struggling with is finding a sense of self, community and brotherhood in the midst of their hard work."
And in the end the Mexican director reveals: «I started fantasizing about this film when as a student I worked as a dishwasher and waiter at the Rainforest Cafe in central London.
And that's when I first read Arnold Wesker's play.
Reading that book while working in an industrial kitchen made the experience much more interesting (and the workdays bearable).
I was struck by the complex caste system that still exists in kitchens and is an essential part of their functioning.
As for the crew of a ship,
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