After its successful UK release on digital from Second Sight last year, Caye Casas' excruciating, shocking and at times hilarious (depending on your sense of humour) horror film gets a disc release, with a limited edition offering some extra features as well.
The film opens with married couple Jesús (David Pareja) and Maria (Estefania de los Santo) in a furniture shop where Jesús wants to buy a coffee table that Maria is distinctly unimpressed by. Over the course of their conversation we learn that Maria has made all the major decisions in the relationship, right down to the naming of their newborn son.
They buy the table and take it back to their flat. Jesús' brother and his much younger girlfriend are coming over for tea, while the 13 year old girl upstairs is under the delusion that Jesús wants to run away with her but has yet to tell his wife. Maria goes shopping, leaving Jesús to mind the baby.
So far, so Alan Ayckbourn or Fawlty Towers-type in its set up for something to happen that needs to be covered up and will cause mounting tension throughout the rest of the film. It's this event that results in the following hour displaying some of the broadest swings between humour and horror ever put on screen. Many, of course, will not find the film funny at all and it likely takes a very special kind of black sense of humour to appreciate it. Suffice to say this is a film you probably need to think twice about viewing if you're a parent, and even if you're not it's definitely going to be a bit much for some.
New extras on Second Sight's Blu-ray include a commentary track by 'extreme cinema enthusiasts' (a good choice) Zoe Rose Smith and Amber T, interviews with the director (23 minutes), stars David Pareja (15 minutes) and Estenfania de los Santos (12 minutes), and DP Alberto Morago (11 minutes). Rebecca Sayce contributes a 19 minute visual essay that looks at the film from the perspective of post partum depression and anxiety, and we get two Casas short films: RIP and Nada SA (both 16 minutes). The limited edition comes with a 120 page book with new writing on the film and six art cards with a rigid slipcase to keep it all in.
Caye Casas' THE COFFEE TABLE is out in both limited and standard edition Blu-ray sets from Second Sight on Monday 28th April 2025
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