The Coffee Table Review: An Unbearably Cruel Dark Comedy Everyone And No One Should Experience [Fantastic Fest 2023]
"Buying that coffee table was the single worst decision I've ever made."
Caye Casas made a fantastic debut in 2017 as co-director of "Killing God," a hilariously dark comedy about messed-up family dynamics and a world-ending proposal. Now, he is really focusing on the dark part of dark comedy for his solo directorial debut in "The Coffee Table," a movie best watched as blind as humanly possible — if you even dare experience it. This is one of the bleakest, meanest, most unbearably cruel movies you could ever see, yet it is so uncomfortable and awkward you can't help but laugh in a maniacal way that might give you more than a few looks from those around you (if they're not laughing themselves). "The Coffee Table" is the anti-schadenfreude movie, one that gives you so much unpleasant misfortune you cannot possibly find it funny ... until you do.
The film follows a middle-aged couple, Maria (Estefanía de los Santos) and Jesús (David Pareja), who are blessed with a newborn baby. Tired of his wife making every decision in their marriage, Jesús decides he will buy the world's tackiest glass coffee table. That decision dramatically changes their lives.
If "Uncut Gems" was billed as the most stressful time you can have a the cinema, then this movie makes that look like a children's educational program. "The Coffee Table" is a tight 90-minute movie that feels 4 hours long, in the sense that you just want to be put out of your misery and see the credits roll. But Casas refuses, forcing you to experience more and more misery with no sense of relief whatsoever, except to embrace the chaos and laugh it off.
Tragedy plus time equals comedy
The cast of "The Coffee Table" is fantastic. Casas reunites with most of his cast from "Killing God," including Itziar Castro, Eduardo Antuña, Emilio Gavira and David Pareja himself, who is the highlight of the film. Pareja does a great job of portraying the absolute worst day a human being could have, in carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, while also trying to hide it all — poorly.
Though not strictly a horror movie, Casas knows how to frame the picture to create horrific tension, using a brutalist yet heightened approach to cinematography, the saturated colors making the horror and trauma feel hyperreal. The horror and the comedy of "The Coffee Table" primarily lies in how far we go to avoid conflict and to hide our mistakes. The longer the film goes, the funnier it becomes. Like with "Killing God," Casas brings an absurdist family dramedy element to the script and knows how to mine humor from dysfunctional relationships. Seeing all these people act out petty grievances while a huge, sicko Hitchcockian time bomb of a reveal waits to be unleashed is hugely entertaining but also nail-bitingly tense.
"The Coffee Table" is one of the most unique experiences you can have in a movie, a torturous dark comedy with a fantastic ensemble, a great eye for visuals that maximize the emotional gut punch, and a script that ties you down to a chair as you go through the nine circles of hell, laughing like a maniac along the way. It is an unforgettable movie that is definitely not for everyone and will make many people super angry, but it is not a movie you will forget anytime soon.
/Film rating: 10 out of 10 shards of glass.