Alonso Ruizpalacios Vies for a Golden Bear with his Kitchen Drama ‘La Cocina’ With Rooney Mara
variety.comAnna Marie de la Fuente Inspired by Arnold Wesker’s 1959 stage play, “The Kitchen,” Alonso Ruizpalacios’ “La Cocina” dives deep into the bowels of the industrial-size kitchen of a restaurant in New York City’s Times Square where food is churned out to serve throngs of diners, mostly tourists.
For Ruizpalacios, whose feature debut, “Güeros,” won the best first feature award at the Berlinale nearly 10 years ago, “La Cocina” (“The Kitchen”) is basically an anti-food-porn movie. “I wanted to show the other side of the food industry where expediency is more important than the quality of the food.
It’s a metaphor for corporate capitalism,” he says. The story takes place at the fictional the Grill in Manhattan, where cash has gone missing from the register.
All the undocumented cooks, hailing from a diversity of countries, are placed under scrutiny, particularly Pedro (Raúl Briones), who is already on the line for his troublemaking.
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