‘The glass is unbreakable, so your table will last forever...’
Black comedy is an odd concept. The idea of taking the darkest subject matter available and using it for laughs may seem strange but it’s a tradition that goes back to Chaplin in terms of cinema (he was inspired to write The Gold Rush after hearing the tragic tale of The Donner Party) and even further for literature. How else are we supposed to deal with all the shit that happens in our mercifully short lives? You’ve got to laugh, right? In fact, many of my favourite films incorporate elements of dark comedy (Clerks, Fargo, Pulp Fiction), but nothing, and I mean nothing, could prepare me for The Coffee Table. This is as black as humour gets before it tips over into something that is bordering on illegal. I adored it…
Much of your enjoyment of Caye Casas’ cruel fable will depend on how much you know about it going in. If you don’t want to know the main thrust of the plot, I would urge you to stop reading now and go and watch the film instead. As the title suggests, a man buys a coffee table. The man is Jesús (David Pareja), a mild-mannered gentleman who very much allows his wife, Maria (Estefanía de los Santos) to call the shots. As a result of this, when it comes to choosing a coffee table, Jesús insists on taking control. Well… kind of. What he actually does is allow an unnamed furniture salesman (Eduardo Antuña) to coerce him into buying an ‘unbreakable’ glass table that is also incredibly ugly. Despite protestations from Maria, they take the table home, and whilst trying to set it up, Jesús accidentally drops the baby on the glass table which promptly breaks and ends up… decapitating the baby. Yes, you read that right. While you don’t actually see the decapitation (thank God), it is very much implied. The rest of the film concerns Jesús’ efforts to conceal this terrible tragedy from his wife, his brother (Josep Maria Riera) and his brother’s inappropriately young girlfriend Cristina (Claudia Riera). In a less successful narrative strand, Jesús also has to fight off the advances of his 13-year-old neighbour Ruth (Gala Flores).
Just writing out the set-up for this movie made me emotionally exhausted all over again. There are moments within this film that will haunt me forever. It contains some of the most unsettling close-ups I have ever seen – not for what they show, but for what they don’t. Although Jesús does a very bad thing (and subsequently also handles it very badly), I felt so much sympathy for this man. I wanted and still want to give him a hug. And yet, despite how grotesque the set-up is, despite how truly harrowing the hypothetical situation is in this film, I still found myself laughing all the way through. Frankly, it’s one of the most astonishing tonal balancing acts I’ve ever seen. Casas somehow manages to combine extreme horror with extreme humour without compromising on either.
The word ‘unique’ gets thrown about a lot in the world of cinema but trust me when I say that this film is truly unique.
