The Kitchen

Futuristic social realism comes to London, marking the combined directorial debut of an actor and an architect.

The future comes in many shapes and sizes. Futuristic social realism, though, is quite a rare beast. The Kitchen, set in a multi-racial community scarred with neon and pestered by civic drones, at times feels like a documentary leaked from the next decade or so. The year is in fact 2044 and the place London, a mash-up of Shepherd’s Bush, Brixton and Hong Kong. A social housing project gone to ruin, the Kitchen has now become a village for the underdog, an English take, perhaps, on New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. It is here that the employee of an ecological funeral home, Isaac ‘Izy’ James, befriends a young lad, Benji, who has recently lost his mother. Benji needs somewhere to crash and Izy is too soft-hearted to leave the boy at the mercy of the estate’s bad crowd.

We first see ‘Izy’ (Kane Robinson) peering out of the letterbox of his reinforced front door, to check if the coast is clear. He just wants a shower in the communal bathroom, a brief moment of respite soon to be spoiled by the taunts of those queuing outside. Yet these very same people unite to warn their fellow residents of the police raids that are becoming increasingly commonplace. And not everybody survives them…

Essentially a mood piece, The Kitchen is hardly strong on story – or surprises – but its mise en scène is everything. Film is such a multi-faceted medium that artists of every stripe can emerge to claim it as their own. The Austrian screenwriter Billy Wilder did just that with his French drama Mauvaise Graine (1934), the cinematographer Nicolas Roeg did OK in the director’s chair and even the fashion designer Tom Ford won enormous acclaim for directing A Single Man and Nocturnal Animals.

The Kitchen marks the feature debut of two artists (and best friends) arriving from complementary disciplines: the architect Kibwe Tavares and the actor Daniel Kaluuya (the latter collaborating on the screenplay with Joe Murtagh). Not surprisingly, then, the film looks astonishing, its space-age skylines blending in jarringly with the brutalism of 1960s’ architecture. Of course, apparent simplicity takes enormous effort and the guerilla-style look of the film was achieved by hundreds of personnel, with the locations ranging from Bethnal Green to Paris.

The movie’s other major plus is the dialogue, much of it muttered in an urban shorthand, punctuated by uncertain silences. This is how real people speak. Anything bordering on the articulate is provided by computerised voices emerging from the faceless machines that dominate the everyday. In fact, much humour is squeezed out at unexpected moments, punctuating the Blade Runner dystopia.

Kane Robinson and Jedaiah Bannerman are entirely convincing in the two leads, as if eavesdropped on by iPhone, while the soundtrack of drill, road rap, dubstep and Afrobeats lends an added authenticity. And to blend in another culture entirely, the former Arsenal forward (and football commentator) Ian Wright is drafted in as ‘Lord Kitchener’, a DJ whose ruminations echo from loudspeakers all over the Kitchen. He is the vocal glue in a community that has learned to co-exist in spite of themselves, bound together by a need to oppose tyrannical forces. Dystopian sci-fi has become all too common, but The Kitchen gives the genre a refreshing, realistic and human touch.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Kane Robinson, Jedaiah Bannerman, Hope Ikpoku Jr, Teija Kabs, Demmy Ladipo, Cristale, BackRoad Gee, Ian Wright.

Dir Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya, Pro Daniel Emmerson and Daniel Kaluuya, Ex Pro Michael Fassbender, Screenplay Daniel Kaluuya and Joe Murtagh, Ph Wyatt Garfield, Pro Des Nathan Parker, Ed Christian Sandino-Taylor and Maya Maffioli, Music Christian Sandino-Taylor and Maya Maffioli, Costumes P.C. Williams.

Film4/DMC Film/59% Productions-Netflix.
106 mins. UK/USA. 2023. US Rel: 8 December 2023. UK Rel: 12 January 2024. Cert. 15.

The Color Purple

Samsara