Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Caye Casas
Starring: David Pareja, Estefanía de los Santos, Claudia Riera, Josep Riera, Itziar Castro, Emilio Gavira
There's dark humour and there's DARK humour. Caye Casas'
The Coffee Table falls very much into the latter category. It
takes one of the most devastating mishaps imaginable and fashions a farce
from its fraught aftermath. We're asked to not only empathise but identify
with a protagonist who acts in a way that is objectively unconscionable, but
the event in question is so traumatising that we can only guess how we might
react if we were unfortunate enough to find ourselves in the same
position.
The marketing for The Coffee Table has kept a specific detail
ambiguous, so I'll do likewise in this review. What I will say however is
that you shouldn't misread the premise as that of another horror movie about
a possessed or cursed inanimate object. The titular furnishing here is only
cursed if you actually believe in such a concept, and there are no
supernatural forces at play. It's simply a case of bad luck.
That ill-fate befalls Jesús (David Pareja) and Maria (Estefanía de los Santos), the bickering couple who take possession of the table. The movie opens
with the pair receiving the hard sell from a furniture salesman who insists
the table in question is the most fantastic piece of furniture ever
designed. Maria is horrified by its tackiness (its glass top is held aloft
by two naked women painted in fake gold) but Jesús is won over by the gaudy
object. Arguing that Maria has made every single choice in their marriage up
to that point, Jesús takes a stand and purchases the table.
When Maria heads out to the shops to purchase some food and wine for the
impending visit of Jesús's brother Carlos (Josep Maria Riera) and his
teenage girlfriend Cristina (Claudia Riera), Jesús begins assembling
the table. He finds an essential screw is missing from the designed in
Sweden but made in China piece, and insists that the salesman bring him a
replacement screw. He also finds that the salesman's claims of the table
being unbreakable are wildly off the mark. Thus occurs the inciting
incident, which Jesús spends the rest of the movie trying to keep a secret
from his wife, their lunch guests, and various other interlopers.
The ensuing narrative takes the form of a classic farce as Jesús tries to
keep his terrible secret hidden, steering people away from certain rooms and
from looking under incriminating pieces of furniture, lest they uncover the
horrific truth. Some reviewers have confessed to being completely unable to
get on board with the comedy due to the dark nature of the material. As a
sicko who can find humour in anything and believes no topic should be
off-limits for comedy, this wasn't my issue with
The Coffee Table. I didn't find it particularly amusing not because of its bad taste setup,
but because Casas struggles to mine enough laughs from the scenario. There's
a long stretch of the movie in which the central quartet is gathered around
the dinner table, during which the movie loses all the gruesome momentum it
had built up to that point. The whole affair is essentially a sick and
twisted episode of Fawlty Towers, with Jesús in the Basil role of trying to keep a secret from the
Sybil-stand-in Maria, but it sorely lacks the manic energy of that show.
Casas sets up some potential pitfalls - like a smitten 13-year-old neighbour
who threatens to call around at some point and tell Maria a fabricated story
about Jesús behaving inappropriately, or the arrival of the screw-bearing
salesman - but any comic potential such interjections might have had are
squandered. The salesman arrives too early and the girl too late in the
proceedings for either of them to have any impact.
In fairness to Casas, I doubt even the best comedy writer could sustain
this premise to full effect for 90 minutes. There's a reason why sitcoms
only last 30 minutes after all. There's probably a very effective 30 minute
short to be edited from The Coffee Table, but as a feature film it's something of a patience tester. Like another
recent Spanish shocker, Hugo Ruiz's
One Night with Adela, it boasts a jaw-dropping moment that might be enough to earn it cult
status in certain circles, but fails to justify the movie built around that
talking point.
