The Kitchen review – vin­di­cat­ing and explosive

“They can only stop We, if We see We as I” is the mantra that rings out over The Kitchen, the last stand­ing social hous­ing estate in a dystopi­an near-future Lon­don. The voice belongs to pirate radio host and beat­ing heart of the block, Lord Kitch­en­er, played with grav­i­tas by leg­end Ian Wright. In their fea­ture direc­to­r­i­al debut, Daniel Kalu­uya and Kib­we Tavares deliv­er a para­ble on the strength of com­mu­ni­ty and the vio­lence of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, thin­ly veiled in a father/​son drama.

Our anti-hero, Izi, is a cold char­ac­ter to get in bed with. Played by the always-under­stat­ed Kane Robin­son, he embod­ies an arche­type of Black mas­culin­i­ty that has been sculpt­ed into cal­lous sto­icism, cater­ing to no woman or child. Izi’s focus is to get out of The Kitchen, or what he calls the ​“shit­hole”. Hav­ing had enough of deal­ing with fre­quent police raids, sur­veil­lance drones and shut off water, Izi grafts at Life After Life, an eco­log­i­cal funer­al home apt­ly shot in Barbican’s con­ser­va­to­ry, and saves up for a soul­less new build flat in the Bue­na Vida hous­ing complex.

On the day his new flat is final­ly ready, Izi comes across the funer­al of an ex-girl­friend and sees her pre-teen son griev­ing alone. The now-orphaned Ben­ji, played by new­com­er Jeda­iah Ban­ner­man, is in search of a father fig­ure. After fol­low­ing Izi to The Kitchen, Ben­ji turns to a group of old­er teenagers, led by actor Hope Ikpoku Jnr’s Sta­ples, an under­cooked but ever-inspir­ing Robin Hood figure.

While the state seeks to raze the work­ing class and pre­dom­i­nant­ly Black com­mu­ni­ty to the ground by depriv­ing them of pow­er and block­ing food deliv­er­ies, Sta­ples’ gang rob food vans and redis­trib­ute the pro­duce to those in need. The images aren’t dis­sim­i­lar to those in tabloids, of Black teenagers on bikes with their faces cov­ered, their mere exis­tence pre­sent­ed as a threat. But here Kalu­uya as co-writer imbues them with the good humour, moral back­bone and human­i­ty we attempt to strip them of before reach­ing adulthood.

Where the core father/​son plot can feel uneven and occa­sion­al­ly at odds with the over­ar­ch­ing themes, the film is swollen with ambi­tion and, through a pow­er­ful score by Labrinth and a fleshy visu­al world mas­ter­mind­ed by Tavares, the ten­sion nev­er wanes. Vibrant areas of The Kitchen are rem­i­nis­cent of Brix­ton mar­ket (which is cur­rent­ly on life sup­port), roller rinks and food stalls pul­sate with the only vital life remain­ing in a bar­ren city.

After 13 years of a Tory autoc­ra­cy, the dystopia of The Kitchen is dev­as­tat­ing­ly pre­scient – yet the per­spec­tive is still hope­ful. Kalu­uya and Tavares are bold in pre­sent­ing gen­tri­fi­ca­tion as the cul­tur­al mur­der that it is while also cel­e­brat­ing, with clear eyes, the reg­u­lar per­son who lives on in spite of it.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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