Avis Metacritic

Briones and Mara are perfect dance partners in this waltz between reality and possibility, stark opposites and doomed lovers united by a hope they know to be foolish.

La Cocina is a phenomenal showcase for Briones, who gives one of the most mesmerizingly multi-faceted performances of the year.

Even if the film ultimately strays too far into virtuosic theatricality, betraying its origins, La Cocina is a gripping reflection on the dehumanizing grind of labor and the ways that its soul-crushing routines stifle hope. Even if he takes too long wrapping up an overwrought climactic crescendo, this is a compelling vision of the immigrant experience as a hellish limbo in which even the seeming ballast of community, brotherhood and love can be illusory.

A chaotic symphony of nearly two dozen characters, this black-and-white indie confection (garnished with sparing touches of color) mixes biting social critique with stylistic bravura.

Ruizpalacios’ film has style to burn but little interest in subtlety, and even the most high-grade hammers can lose their sheen after 139 minutes of hammering.

While La Cocina can’t always shake the polemical stiffness of its source material or the political chokehold of its modernized setting, the film’s agit-prop expressionism allows it to push beyond the boundaries of other stories like it.

La Cocina goes further than recasting the American dream as a nightmare and the much sought-after visa as a ticket to infinite exploitation.

When we get to the end of its hefty runtime, we get the sensation that La Cocina tried to be several things — an investigative thriller, a fish-out-of-water drama, a delirious trip of a man who’s starting to get burnt out — and didn’t manage to take any of them all the way.

We never shake off the feeling we’re watching a filmed play, one whose dramatic crescendos and lulls are relentlessly stagey and stylised.

The film’s epic finale feels stagy — while these real-life frustrations are anything but.