The Kitchen review (LFF 2023), Culture Whisper

After the world crossed the threshold into prestige TV, the now-crowded landscape has turned into a weird reality where many movies would've been better as series and vice versa. The Kitchen screams to be released from its 100-minute cage; to explore its vision of a gentrified London dystopia with episodic depth. In the production notes, the co-director and co-writer Daniel Kaluuya even described how the development process conjured enough material for a ‘mini-series’. This critic argues that the concept wields even more potential.

Unfortunately, with no promise of a fruitful future ahead, we can only judge what's at hand. And what’s at hand is an ambitiously human sci-fi drama that becomes lost and muddled in too many ideas and not enough time.

Perhaps the reason why The Kitchen’s televisual potential is so transparent is because of its resemblances to Black Mirror. Once the film drops on Netflix, you could switch between the two and not realise they’re different properties.

It’s London, 2040: a city of surveillance drones, smart mirrors and artificial intelligence. Most of the districts have been gentrified to benefit the rich, pushing out the poor. The latter have concentrated themselves in a specific area known as The Kitchen, which is spread with broken and unfinished high-rises supplied with heavy protective doors.

Behind one of these doors is Izi (Kano), an ecological funeral worker who dreams of leaving this ‘s***hole’ to secure a posh, central London flat. He endures and doesn’t engage much, holding on to that drive to leave. But when he bumps into teenager Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman), who’s probably his son, Izi begins to rethink his life and priorities.

Kaluuya and co-scribe Joe Murtagh (Calm with Horses) write at their finest in these more personal scenes, where Izi and Benji reluctantly attempt to bond while gripping their evasive masculinities. It’s a connective route into the world of The Kitchen, so thick with detail and drenched with signage; a hive of sorts, which is helpful when danger is near.

But the danger rarely, if ever, comes from within. Unmerciful police forces penetrate the district, creating a permanent dread of possible violence. And although racial elements aren’t explicitly stated, they’re a massive factor.

Kaluuya and Murtagh do a decent job of building the world and following Izi and Benji in their new relationship, but one is often at the expense of the other. You're so invested in their development that you almost forget the ostensibly terrible society around them.

It’s like The Kitchen is constantly remembering what genre it is, and that it's building to a throb of rebellion against the people in power. This is represented not only by local gangs, who try to recruit Benji, but also by the outspoken and vastly underseen disc jockey 'Lord Kitchener' (former footballer Ian Wright).

And once you reach that point, when the Kitchenfolk decide to fight back, the film cuts to black – concluding on a note of inescapable threat. Where’s the third act, satiating that need for protest and revolution? Maybe we’ll get that in the series…

Originally published on Culture Whisper