With a second Trump presidency now a grim reality and an immigration crackdown in progress, La Cocina takes a timely look at the cultural melting pot that is a New York restaurant kitchen, introducing us to the invisible workforce that keeps the food coming. Written and directed by Mexican filmmaker Alonso Ruizpalacios (Güeros), it’s loosely based on Arnold Wesker’s 1957 stage play The Kitchen (which became a 1961 British film from director James Hill), with the source material’s European migrants replaced by Latin Americans.

Combining culture clashes, mystery and romance, this elegantly monochromatic effort is set in The Grill, a Times Square restaurant, with the bulk of the action taking place in a bustling basement kitchen, staffed significantly by the aforementioned immigrants, alongside Americans and those of Middle Eastern descent. The film’s roving camera captures the cavernous building, multiple moving parts and fast-paced, often chaotic atmosphere. Although the film shares some stress levels with The Bear, it completely avoids the food porn that is such a huge feature of that show, not least as the fare at this tourist trap is presumably pretty dire, while black-and-white doesn’t exactly lend itself to depicting delicious meals. Instead, the human drama dominates.

We’re inducted into the establishment alongside 19-year-old Estela (Anna Díaz), a sweet, diminutive soul who scams a job there despite not being of legal age. She’s a family friend of one of the cooks, Pedro (Raúl Briones), a hot-headed Mexican dreamer and troublemaker. Pedro has recently pulled a knife on a colleague and is in a tempestuous relationship with American waitress Julia (Rooney Mara, modestly taking her place amid less well-known faces) who has unhappily discovered she is pregnant and is set on having an abortion. Meanwhile, a different kind of scandal is brewing as the restaurant’s accountant Mark (James Waterston) and manager Luis (Eduardo Olmos) begin a series of interrogations in their attempts to track down a thief after they discover that $800 has gone missing from the previous night’s takings. 

‘Being the gringos’ enemy is easy. It’s being their friend that’s fucking hard,’ Pedro tells his cretinous boss Luis, as La Cocina highlights the precariousness of this kind of employment and the resentments (and camaraderie) between races. It sports a simmering sense of rage about the injustice of it all, channelled through the increasingly desperate character of Pedro, whose frustrations will eventually boil over in the unashamedly overblown conclusion. 

The idea for this film originally came to Ruizpalacios when he was working as a waiter and dishwasher at a London café during his student days, and happened to read Wesker’s play. He wanted to draw attention to the complex caste system that exists in big kitchens, the fact that there’s not enough time to produce anything edible and, with thousands of people to serve on a busy day, how things need to operate with the well-drilled intensity of a ship.

If La Cocina really does a number on the American Dream after we watch Pedro’s hopes being smashed to smithereens, a supposed success story emerges in this restaurant’s Arab-American owner, the formidable Mr Rashid (Oded Fehr). When he stalks the kitchen aisles, in ostensibly friendly and sometimes more overtly unfriendly fashion, the effect on the staff is chilling. Rashid refuses to give a hand up to those who have come after him in their quest for a better life, dangling the promise of sponsoring visas simply to improve morale, but appearing to have no intention of actually following through.

Ruizpalacios keeps the plates spinning impressively, resulting in a film that overflows with drama, comedy and crushing disappointment, featuring a freewheeling visual style (Juan Pablo Ramírez’s cinematography is sublime) and an abundance of intriguing players. In its quieter scenes, La Cocina boasts the beauty of a Fellini, while there’s a US indie, almost mumblecore feel to other moments. There are points where it is crying out to dig further into these fascinating characters’ stories, but it offers a tantalising overview of the issues as it brings a frenzied, volatile environment vividly to life.

La Cocina is in cinemas from Friday 28 March.