Review: A restaurant is a world unto itself in ‘La Cocina,’ one of the year’s freshest films

Opening with a quotation from Henry David Thoreau’s 1863 essay “Life Without Principle” including the lines “Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives / This world is a place of business / What an infinite bustle,” the film “La Cocina” sets out to fully examine those concepts, and how work can take over one’s life and sweep away all too many other concerns.

Directed by Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios, who adapted Arnold Wesker’s 1957 play “The Kitchen,” the film is a blast of furious energy that also knows when to let up, with a few moments of gentle lyricism as punctuation. This is Ruizpalacios’ fourth feature film in roughly a decade and feels like a big step forward, a move from being a promising talent to someone truly coming into their own as a storyteller. Even while what is depicted onscreen veers wildly out of control, there is a sense of surety to the filmmaking that makes this one of the freshest movies of the year.

“La Cocina” is set at a large restaurant in Manhattan known as the Grill,which pumps out food to tourists at an alarming volume. The story begins with young Estela (Anna Díaz) making her way through the side door sometime before opening to ever-so-slightly scam her way into a position as an assistant cook. From there things just keep happening, as one event unfolds into another in a headlong rush amid the incessant clatter of plates and pans and the machine spitting out endless order tickets.

The action soon pivots to Pedro (a remarkable Raúl Briones), a burnt-out chef who comes from the same small Mexican town as Estela and is the kitchen’s charismatic, chaotic center. He has been having a not totally secret affair with one of the waitresses, Julia (Rooney Mara), who has gotten pregnant and has an appointment for an abortion later in the day between shifts.

The employees represent a mini-United Nations, with some workers referring to each other by their nation of origin as nicknames. (One new waitress repeatedly corrects people that she is Dominican, not Mexican.) Their lives outside the restaurant are of little consequence, with a break in the alley out back the only time for meaningful connection.

There remains a strict sense of territory and hierarchy as the waitresses do their work and the chefs do theirs, all with an anxious intensity. The owner often dangles a never-fulfilled promise of helping his undocumented staffers get their papers as a way to keep them working. Management is anxious to recover the $800 missing from the night before, with staff members being interviewed to see if anyone stole it.

Far from a well-oiled machine, the kitchen is a zone of dysfunction rife with petty squabbles and minor fiefdoms; it feels like a minor miracle that anything gets served to anyone at all. A broken soda machine creates a near-apocalyptic flood. Eventually the discord in the kitchen spills out into the dining room and that is when everyone knows things have gone too far.

It says something about her talents that, even though Julia forms the emotional core of the story, Mara does not stand out as the Hollywood star among the rest of the cast. With her stringy, bleached-out hair and weary demeanor, she fits right in, while her antics such as a trick with a lighter or burping after chugging beer too fast are adorable and endearing but also mask something troubled and struggling underneath.

Rooney Mara in the movie “La Cocina.”

(Willa)

Working with cinematographer Juan Pablo Ramírez and editor Yibrán Asuad — and shooting in black-and-white with meaningful splashes of color — Ruizpalacios creates a visual style that continues to reinvent itself right up to the end, crafting an unpredictable feeling that matches the volatile plotting.

Comparisons to the hit television series “The Bear,” also about the behind-the-scenes goings-on at a restaurant, will be inevitable. But “La Cocina” has essentially no interest in the food itself — the only thing lovingly shot is a simple sandwich — because Ruizpalacios keeps the focus tightly on the infinite hustle of the work itself and the people just trying to make it to the end of the day so they can come back to do it all over again.