Berlinale Finale: 'La Cocina' & 'Jane Planet' Review
Our last two reviews from Berlinale
‘La Cocina’ Review: Alonso Ruizpalacios’ Culinary Allegory of Post-Trump America Fails to Reach Its Metaphysical Boiling Point
Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios’ English feature debut, La Cocina, a frantic if acrimonious look at the high stakes backrooms of a New York restaurant is sure to appease the appetites of audiences hungry for the surefire combo of watered down social realism and self-deprecating humor à la the wildly popular FX miniseries The Bear.
A modern day adaptation of late British dramatist Arnold Wesker’s The Kitchen, La Cocina is shot almost entirely in black and white, and wastes no time in getting to the meat of the matter: The film welcomes us into the hectic streets of downtown New York, with a quote from Henry David Thoreau lamenting the never-ending bustle of commerce - and the perennial need to make a living that comes with it. Set in the kitchen of a mid-brow bistro in the aptly named neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen, the film depicts a chaotic day in the life of a multilingual bunch of overworked and underpaid service workers, far removed from the pristine white of linen fine dining tablecloths & the pretentious grandeur of haute cuisine, instead adding a little spice into ordinary meals, all with a twinge of magical realism.
Led by the hot-headed, yet simpatico Chef Pedro (an electric standout Raúl Briones Carmona) who dreams of a better life out of the grease and grime of stained tile floors with his waitress lover, Julia (a wistful Rooney Mara), we get a glimpse into the racially charged interpersonal dynamics of the kitchen staff, a stand-in for the melting pot society of a post-Trump America. From a white supremacist line cook with a mean streak, who at his wit’s end howls at anyone within earshot to “speak English”, to an undocumented immigrant sous chef who walks her way into a job through loose connections, perseverance and a twinge of luck, every character we meet represents an allegorical demographic of the American working-class.
If the tagline on the poster is to be believed, La Cocina is a tragicomic ode to the invisible people who serve and prepare our food, a promise it only partially fulfills, much like it’s predecessors. From Mark Mylod’s half baked eat-the-rich horror comedy(?), The Menu, to Philip Barranti’s one-shot thriller, Boiling Point, the culinary world seems to provide ample ground for filmmakers to weave digestible social commentary (pun-intended) into their narrative without overwhelming the audience with viable and nuanced social criticism that goes beyond half-hearted sentiments like “eat the rich”.
Much like Ilker Çatak’s Oscar nominated classroom satire, Teacher’s Lounge, – which premiered at Berlinale last year in the Panorama section – La Cocina uses the potential of its setting to subvert the clichés of its genre by blurring the lines between fiction and fantasy. Ruizpalacios uses the kitchen to explore the convoluted entanglement of hope, desire, and desperation in individual pursuits of the long-forgone American Dream, with a poignant ode to its literary paragon in the finale: The Great Gatsby’s elusive green light. La Cocina isn’t a perfect film: the narrative feels disjointed at times, certain scenes go on for too long and get lost in the routine hustle and bustle of the ever-present culinary chaos going on in the background, but it offers a much more biting criticism of the exploitative nature of managerial capitalism than its contemporary predecessors that serve ready-to-eat twitter discourse on a silver platter and call it satire. Leaving the cinema, one has the acute sense that Ruizpalacios’ kitchen represents a much more nuanced microcosm of society, wherein the everyday struggle of service workers who plate our dishes to put food on their table, is put on stark display for our eyes to feast on.
‘Janet Plane’t Review: Pulitzer Laureate Annie Baker’s Debut Is A Sun-Scorched Meditation on the Tenderness of Fraught Mother-Daughter Relationships
A24 Films
Few films capture the wondrous sense of possibility that childhood summers evoke as well as Annie Baker’s debut feature Janet Planet. As the final echoes of the school bell die down the hallway, time slows to a pace in tandem with the children making their way home hunched under their rucksacks, and giddy with excitement for the promise of idle days spent soaking in the sun and playing on the grass ‘till sore feet and growling stomachs force them to yield and wander back inside. This nostalgic atmosphere is lovingly captured by cinematographer Maria von Hausswolf’s (Godland, A White, White Day) warm hues which permeate the film, as befitting of a hazy summer seen from the eyes of the gangly and awkward eleven year old Lacey (a charmingly endearing Zoe Ziegler). Lacey spends the majority of her days cooped up with her bohemian mother Janet (a luminous Julianne Nicholson) in their rustic cottage in Pioneer Valley, Western Massachusetts. Afflicted with an awkward demeanor and standoffish presence, she seems to have trouble making friends, preferring to tag along on her mother’s hippie antics instead. Various eccentric characters float in and out of Janet’s – hence Lacey’s – life, each commemorated by a title card that marks the beginning and the end of their relationship. Whether it be the men who, taken up by Janet’s indelibly charming smile, pursue her romantically, or a well-meaning friend who tries to make her aware of her self-sabotaging need for male validation, Lacey hangs back to observe the initial beginnings and the subsequent breakdown of each new relationship. Unable to intervene but in the expansive world of her childhood imagination: making the least favorite of her mom’s boyfriends magically disappear with her mind.
Janet Planet is a gem of slice-of-life cinema that is more concerned with narrativizing a feeling than emotionalizing a narrative. The standout moments remind one of the all–consuming earnestness of childhood feeling. Like the scene where Janet is brushing through Lacey’s hair when she notices lice on the comb, and hastily exits the bathroom, leaving her daughter in an anxious stupor shouting ‘What is it!?’ as the camera pans to her petrified face in the bathroom mirror. It’s a tender, comedic moment that feels all-too-familiar. Another instance that sticks in the mind is when Lacey, starting to come to terms with her budding sexuality, asks her mom what she would think of her if she turned out to be gay. She poses the question so matter-of-factly, feigning nonchalance like only a precious eleven year old curtailing her internal misgivings can. One can’t help but sigh at the sincerity of Ziegler’s performance. Her big doe eyes gazing at Janet behind the wire frame glasses in curious wonderment, judging her every move. In a follow-up Q&A, director Annie Baker described her feature debut as ‘a personal love story between mother and daughter’. Having become a mother recently, Baker said she thought a lot about ‘what it means to narrate your child to themselves’, through second-hand anecdotes of drives to the mall and stories of forgotten firsts, baby pictures and misshapen toys, or in the case of Janet Planet, through memories of bygone summers that linger in the back of one’s adult mind as flickers of sunlight filtered through lush oak branches.
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