In what sounds like a conceptual precursor to much-later “immersive” theatrical experiences like Tony ’n’ Tina’s Wedding, prolific English author Arnold Wesker (who died just eight years ago) had his biggest hit with 1957’s The Kitchen, his first produced play. It was a slice-of-life piece about a single working day in the cookery of a large, busy London restaurant. The novelty of seeing an arena of human endeavor so utterly ordinary yet rarely dramatized made it widely translated and produced around the world, even if it’s fallen out of repertoire for many decades now. There was also a B&W film version in 1961, now largely forgotten.
Likely to leave a more lasting impression is Alonso Ruizpalacios’ La Cocina, if only because that Mexican director is probably going to have a prominent international career for some time to come. His prior features Gueros (2014) and Museo were bold, confident and ambitious. (I was less enthused about the more recent A Cop Movie.) It’s hard to believe Museo wasn’t a much bigger deal, but then it had the misfortune of coming out the same year as his fellow countryman Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma—an acclaim magnet that overshadowed most other non-English-language titles of 2018, as Parasite would in 2019.
Wexler’s original play also dealt with immigrant workers and culture clashes, but Ruizpalacios’ loose adaptation considerably ratchets those elements up to reflect 21st century political currents. Here, the setting is a medium-upscale Manhattan restaurant called The Grill, and the level of behind-scenes tension is often so heated, you might feel like you’re sitting on one.
We begin in relative quiet as 19-year-old Estela (Anna Diaz) waits to be interviewed for a job—any job—with a relative she hasn’t seen since childhood as her “reference.” That turns out to be Pedro (Raul Briones), one of many specialty entree cooks here (he does poultry), though today he seems more focused on a squirrelly, ambiguous relationship with waitress Julia (Rooney Mara). We soon realize what’s secretly going on between them has indeed reached a crisis point, which in turn may or may not be tied to eight hundred dollars the in-house accountant says is missing from last night’s till.
Being potentially accused of theft turns everyone’s mood a little more surly, which is impressive because the general-vibe needle here already frequently hits 10 on the antagonism scale. The chef (Lee Sellars, channeling R. Lee Ermey’s boot camp drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket) seems to do nothing but scream. That does nothing to ease the kitchen’s frenetic I-needed-that-five-minutes-ago pace, tensions between kitchen and wait staff, rivalries between cooks, the clannish nature of various ethnic, and other factions.
It’s a wee United Nations in here, but diplomacy is no one’s strong suit—indeed, this is one of those movies that makes NYC seem like the rudest place on Earth, with nearly every character ready to out-yell or stare down Travis Bickle at some (or every) point. Estela turns out to be a relatively minor character. But occasional glimpses of her serve to remind us that any outsider would find this hornet’s nest of unkind laughter, performance pressure, and trigger-tempers somewhere between “abusive” and “terrifying.” There are a few extraordinary events (the kitchen floods, a spectacular climatic fight spills into the dining area) during La cocina’s 140 minutes. Yet the jaded response they elicit from dramatic personae suggests this exhausting shift isn’t so different from any other.
Without getting too preachy, Ruizpalacios pushes to the forefront several hot-button issues and inequities of our time. The lone straight white male bro type (Spenser Granese as Max) on the prep line is inclined to shriek “Speak English!!!” when conversations in Spanish or Arabic or whatever happen nearby, even if they have nothing to do with him. Needless to say, many of the employees here lack legal status for work, let alone citizenship. Eventually we realize that management keeps stringing them along with the promise of just such “papers”—with no intention of actually following through. It’s a perfect illustration of one reason why “Deport them all right now!” won’t work: Most of the services you enjoy as an ostensible “real American” depend on just such underpaid, non-unionized toil from immigrants whose uncertain status prevents them from complaining.
La cocina is very theatrical in a way, complete with at least a couple showy monologues. But it’s also wildly cinematic, almost excessively so at times, as if the director were using this material as a long highlight reel to demonstrate the full range of his skill set. It’s a testament to his talent that this stylistic gamut—running from surreal to slapstick to elegantly minimalist—is always enjoyable, even at its most gratuitous. At times the dazzling technique threatens to overwhelm the actual content, though fortunately there’s just enough of the latter to lend real heft at the tunnel-end of this long seriocomic nightmare. It’s an occasionally contrived, sometimes overcooked microcosm of fissures widening at large today between the exploiters and the exploited—but still one that hits a bulls’-eye more often than not. La cocina opens at SF’s Roxie Theater on Fri/1.
Another abusive work environment story is told in the documentary Black Box Diaries, which also opens at the Roxie Fri/1, and plays the Rafael Film Center Sun/3 only. Shiori Ito was a journalistic intern for Reuters in 2015 when she was allegedly drugged and raped at a Tokyo hotel by veteran photojournalist Noriyuki Yamaguchi. But in Japan hardly anyone ever reports sexual assault, for good reason—the relevant laws are over a century old, placing borderline-absurd burdens of proof on the victim. (At one point Ito was made to “re-enact” her ordeal with a male dummy for police.)
Social taboos are such that it is still considered scandalous to admit such an occurrence, and it is not unusual for the complainant to be regarded as somehow at fault. Ito gets messages from complete strangers telling her such things don’t happen to women who are “raised right,” while others flat-out call her a “liar” and “exploiter” of the man she’s accused. His close relationships to high-ranking police and the then-Prime Minister (whose biography he wrote) also appeared to factor in the dismissive treatment of her case.
Nonetheless, Ito refused to drop it. In choosing to make herself the public face of sex crime prosecution, she gave the #MeToo movement belated momentum in Japan, with potential for antiquated laws being changed at last. Following her book of the same title, Black Box Diaries is an engrossing, close-up chronicle of a campaign for justice that could hardly be more personal. Its director-subject will be at the Roxie on Sat/2 and at the Rafael screening for a moderated live Q&A.
