'The Coffee Table' Stains the Heart with Agonizing Grief and Tension [Review]

​(Note: This film is best to go into blind. Read on at your own peril.)
 
We sometimes wonder what we would do in particularly awful situations. Would we panic? Take control? Lie? Kill, maybe? Director Caye Casas’ latest, The Coffee Table, brings audiences about as close to the agony of holding a terrible secret as a film can manage. A tense story that whistles like a teapot while assaulting the audience with one gut punch after another, the experience of it is pure hell. Despite Casas laying out a clear blueprint of exactly where this morbid tale is taking us, the lack of surprises doesn’t detract much from what is a pulse-pounding exploration of guilt and cowardice in the face of a family’s worst nightmare.
 
Married couple Jesús (David Pareja) and María (Estefanía de los Santos) have just had a baby. Stressed out and upset that his wife has gotten to pick out every other piece of furniture in their apartment, he insists on buying what she deems an ugly coffee table, one that the salesman claims will “change your life for the better”. The table does indeed change their lives, but not how either of them could have imagined. Now holding a terrible secret with guests coming over for dinner, tension boils as those not in the know come closer to discovering the horror hiding right underneath their noses.
 
Let me just tell you up front, The Coffee Table is a rough watch, though not quite for the reasons you may be expecting.
 
Casas chooses to open this pressure cooker on an image of María screaming as she’s giving birth to their baby boy. This moment defines what it’s like to watch The Coffee Table. It’s uncomfortable. It’s aggressive. And as María holds her son, Esther Méndez’s moving score comes in with a melancholic tone that unnerves. Cringey tension barrels towards the viewer from the get go, introducing us to this on the rocks couple that fights like the act is air for their lungs. Casas paints a pretty typical portrait of a rough marriage from a male perspective, portraying Jesús as the quiet, timid one and María as a grating nagger. Shoutout to Santos, who brings a laugh so cackling and unnerving that she could make Argento’s Three Mothers blush. There’s a great amount of sadness to the fact that buying the title coffee table—one that features two nude women painted in gold—seems to be Jesús’ attempt at happiness. Along with muted lighting, Pareja’s broken and heart wrenching performance works to accentuate his pathetic existence, the tendrils of his sorrow working through the film like grief-stricken veins. Depressing? That word can hardly capture the air of misery that hangs over Casas’ film.

Coupled with that darkness is a bristling tension that permeates all throughout The Coffee Table. A particular character has the most terrible of secrets, one with an unavoidable truth that threatens to emerge in every scene from the fifteen-minute mark and on. It’s the kind of secret that’s gut-wrenching on its own, but even more so once it becomes a series of lies building towards an even worse reveal. Think of it like Hitchcock's Rope, only in this case, the characters do not take joy in the risk of being discovered. The inevitability of what’s to come may have some viewers less invested with knowing exactly how this story will end, but Casas proves to have the sort of directorial instincts that’ll make most appreciate the journey more than the destination. Through sweaty close-ups, mocking imagery such as one character wearing a shirt that says “no bad days” and dialogue that peels back the secret bit by bit like pulling at the cuticle of a nail, the filmmaker straps us down in the headspace of the guilty party and barrages us with his sense of black humor. Blow after blow, you’re made to feel the intense burning of the hell this person has created for themselves. This is a film that makes you grip your seat with anxiety. It frustrates you. Pains you. Makes you want to scream. All on the way to a powder-keg explosion of a finale as predictable as it is heartbreaking.
 
The Coffee Table hits a bullseye with what its aiming for, and that’s to give the audience the crushing sensation of guilt brought on by somewhat understandable though detrimental cowardice. None of us can say how we would react to the inciting incident of this film, and I pray we will never know. What Casas and co-writer Cristina Borobia assure us of though is that the lie is always worse than the truth. No one wins with a lie. All it does is create temporary relief from the reality of a situation, even then, becoming its own nightmare. Casas’ film is pure, psychological torture in that regard. The longer the secret is carried, the more reality crumbles for the guilty party. The horror of it all comes from the way in which that person’s shame festers, becoming sounds that aren’t there, terrible images that flash across the mind like marathon runners on an endless loop. It makes you feel crazy. All of it skewering cowardly acts and asking the audience, is the price of a lie really worth it?
 
Casas' film isn’t a gruesome, violent nightmare like Martyrs as some have made it out to be. Instead, The Coffee Table is a grueling trek through a guilty mind swallowed by grief and agony and a horrible inevitability. Knowing where this rumbling train of a film will stop may slow the momentum for some, but for others, it’s a gripping encapsulation of an unimaginable sorrow. If you do decide to venture into the cavernous mouth of Casa’s latest, just make sure to have something comforting lined up for after. You’ll likely need it.

The Coffee Table is now available on VOD. 

By Matt Konopka