{"id":609182,"date":"2024-02-18T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-18T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/berlin-all-the-worlds-a-kitchen-in-rooney-mara-starrer-la-cocina\/"},"modified":"2024-02-18T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-18T14:00:00","slug":"berlin-all-the-worlds-a-kitchen-in-rooney-mara-starrer-la-cocina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/berlin-all-the-worlds-a-kitchen-in-rooney-mara-starrer-la-cocina\/","title":{"rendered":"#Berlin: All the World\u2019s A Kitchen in Rooney Mara Starrer \u2018La Cocina\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n It was when Alonso Ruizpalacios was in London working as a dishwasher at the (now-extinct) Rainforest Cafe that he came up with the idea for\u00a0La\u00a0Cocina<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cI was a drama student and I\u2019d just read the [1957] play\u00a0The Kitchen<\/em>\u00a0by Arnold Wesker and to make the work \u2014 which is tough, monotonous and very, very hard \u2014 bearable, I\u2019d look at it through the creative lens of the play. If you see how a kitchen works, you realize it is much like the world, like [how] society works. Wesker says for Shakespeare all the world is a stage, whereas for him all the world is a kitchen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n It was decades\u00a0later, after success with Mexican films like\u00a0Museo<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0A Cop Movie<\/em>, that Ruizpalacios came back to the idea, taking\u00a0The Kitchen<\/em>\u00a0as the jumping-off point for his English-language debut, transferring the action from\u00a0late-\u201950s London to modern-day New York. While the rough plot follows that of Wesker\u2019s play, the characters, dialog and the structure of the film are Ruizpalacios\u2019 own.<\/p>\n

\n La\u00a0Cocina<\/em>, which premieres in competition in Berlin on Friday, Feb.\u202f16, is set in The Grill, a huge restaurant off Times Square where immigrants, mostly illegal, slave away in the back room to serve up plate after plate of awful food to unsuspecting tourists.\u00a0A Cop Movie<\/em>\u00a0alum Ra\u00fal Briones is Pedro, a short-order cook in love with American waitress Julia, played by Rooney Mara. In the middle of the lunch rush, The Grill\u2019s manager notices money has gone missing from the till, and the undocumented Pedro is the prime suspect.<\/p>\n

\n Ruizpalacios, who combines documentary and fictional staging in his features, did extensive research in New York kitchens for the film, recording interviews with undocumented cooks, cleaners and wait staff.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s a whole other side of New York, going into these kitchens, which are just full of Mexicans,\u201d he says. \u201cOne told me: \u2018All the food in New York is Mexican food.\u2019 There\u2019s no Japanese, no Chinese, no Greek food. It\u2019s all Mexican. Because it\u2019s all made by Mexicans. And most of them from one state, Puebla.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Rooney Mara and Ra\u00fal Briones in \u2018La Cocina\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n

Juan Pablo Ram\u00edrez\/Filmadora<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n La\u00a0Cocina<\/em>\u00a0begins with Estela (Anna D\u00edaz), a recent immigrant, getting off the subway in a chilly Manhattan winter and making her way to The Grill in search of work.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s a metaphor for the migrant\u2019s journey, but it ended up being more than that,\u201d says Ruizpalacios, \u201cbecause Anna had never been outside Mexico and just getting her into the U.S., getting her a visa, bringing her over, took more than two years. That was a movie in itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n The opening scene was shot documentary-style. D\u00edaz was given subway fare and the address of The Grill and, speaking no English and never having set foot in New York before, was sent off from Brooklyn to find her way, shivering in a light sweater \u2014 \u201cnone of these migrants are prepared for the weather,\u201d notes Ruizpalacios \u2014 to Times Square.<\/p>\n

\n While there are plenty of Mexican films about undocumented immigration to the U.S., most, says Ruizpalacios, focus on the journey North. \u201cI wanted to show what happ<\/a>ens after the journey, what happens when they arrive, what happens to their American Dream,\u201d he says. \u201cSo this is the story of Mexico, but it\u2019s also the story of the United States, the story of all these immigrants who travel<\/a> there, chasing this dream. But what happens on the other side, what is the price of this dream?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n In The Grill, at least, the American Dream is long gone. Ruizpalacios depicts the lunch rush as a hellscape of dog-eat-dog competition among cooks, cleaners and wait staff, all battling to survive \u2014 and all overseen by the strict hierarchy of the Chef (Lee R. Sellars), restaurant owner Rashid (Oded Fehr) and manager Nonzo (Motell Foster).<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe kitchen is like a caste system \u2014 hierarchy is not taken lightly there,\u201d says the dishwasher-turned-director. \u201cIt\u2019s a place everyone can be friends and talk and\u00a0laugh, but when rush hour comes, it\u2019s every man for himself. Seeing that firsthand is brutal. No one will help you out, it is lonely and competitive. So, of course, it\u2019s the perfect metaphor for\u00a0late-stage capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n At one point, a faulty drinks machine starts pumping out Cherry Coke, drenching the kitchen in a flood of near-biblical proportions.<\/p>\n

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\n While there is a lot of cooking in\u00a0La\u00a0Cocina<\/em>, none of the results look very appetizing. Ruizpalacios shoots the food preparation scenes in harsh neon light and has his cinematographer Juan Pablo Ram\u00edrez weave the camera in and out with the hectic energy of a war reporter in the midst of combat.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cOver the\u00a0last couple of years there has been a fascination with kitchens,\u201d says Ruizpalacios, pointing to films like\u00a0The Menu\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The Taste of Things<\/em>, or Emmy-winning series<\/a>\u00a0The Bear<\/em>. \u201cBut if you look down cinema history, there\u2019ve always been films revolving around the act of cooking, because it\u2019s such a human activity. One thing I think sets this film apart, though, is it\u2019s not a food-porn film. In fact, it\u2019s an anti-food-porn film. The food they cook at The Grill is shit food, and I show how shit it is. The only food porn moment in the film is when Pedro makes a sandwich for Julia. It\u2019s the only moment where making food becomes an act of love. That I shot like\u00a0Chef\u2019s Table<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n In a twist on the migrant story of the film, Ruizpalacios shot all the interiors for\u00a0La\u00a0Cocina<\/em>\u00a0in Mexico, building a multistory set of the restaurant and kitchen. He brought the entire cast down to Mexico City for three weeks to rehearse before the eight-week shoot.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe were a real theater troupe, we had all these Americans, a French Moroccan, an Albanian, the Haitians \u2014 who are the dishwashers \u2014 and of course all the Mexicans,\u201d says Ruizpalacios. \u201cIt was a real melting pot. It was really important for me to shoot this film in Mexico, to invert the situation in a way, and bring the Americans down here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt was a really unique ensemble experience, unlike anything I\u2019ve done before,\u201d adds Mara, who says Ruizpalacios\u2019 theater-style working method, along with the\u00a0La\u00a0Cocina<\/em>\u00a0script, convinced her to take on the role of Julia. \u201cAfter I met with him, I just really wanted to work with him,\u201d she says. \u201cJust the way Alonso talked about how he wanted to make this movie, how he worked with actors, got me excited to be in this film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Unlike Ruizpalacios, Mara had little service experience. \u201cI was a bartender for like two nights. I went to bartending school, which is like a three-day course, not a real school,\u201d she says, \u201cand it was actually really fun and interesting, [but] I was a terrible bartender. I\u00a0lasted those two nights and that was the end of my bartending career.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n Some sequences in the film are entirely improvised \u2014 \u201cthe staff meal where everyone\u2019s talking about the theft, none of that was scripted,\u201d Ruizpalacios says \u2014 but there are also carefully choreographed scenes. Like that lunch rush, a 14-minute sequence done in a single Steadicam shot.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe lunch rush scene was done over maybe a week, it was really specific and exact, and pretty challenging to shoot,\u201d recalls Mara, \u201cespecially when the floor was full of 10 inches of Cherry Coke. But it was also exhilarating. Like a fun, crazy dance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n But Ruizpalacios says he had Mara in mind for his American waitress, Julia, early on. Years before he wrote the\u00a0La\u00a0Cocina<\/em>\u00a0script, he was in New York with his wife on Christmas Eve and, with nothing to do, they went to the movies.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cAs I approached the concessionary to buy popcorn, I noticed that the rug was soaking wet,\u201d says Ruizpalacios. \u201cI looked and saw the Cherry Coke machine was just an endless fountain. Nobody was even paying attention. The staff were just serving people and pretending it wasn\u2019t there. When someone needed a Cherry Coke, they\u2019d just scoop the cup in the pool and hand it over. I thought: \u2018Wow, this is the perfect image of\u00a0late-stage capitalism. It has to go in my movie.\u2019 And the film we went to see that night was\u00a0The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo<\/em>\u00a0with Rooney Mara. So I think it was meant to be.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was when Alonso Ruizpalacios was in London working as a dishwasher at the (now-extinct) Rainforest Cafe that he came up with the idea for\u00a0La\u00a0Cocina. \u201cI was a drama student and I\u2019d just read the [1957] play\u00a0The Kitchen\u00a0by Arnold Wesker and to make the work \u2014 which is tough, monotonous and very, very hard \u2014…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":609183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Alonso-BTS-16x9-1.jpg?w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[148719,137279,147675,124783,46542],"class_list":["post-609182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-berlin-film-festival-2024","tag-berlinale","tag-berlinale-2024","tag-international","tag-rooney-mara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}