This isn't actually a review I could write anywhere, because there is no publication that could tolerate this level of reveal about a movie that relies on the relatively early surprise of what it's about. But I can write it here. That's why we have blogs. However, it won't always conform to the way I usually write reviews, since I'm allowing myself additional latitude anyway.
One more WARNING before I start the review proper.
Okay here we go:
Every new parent's worst fear is that their baby will have stopped breathing. You can't put your child down for a long nap, or especially the full night, without wondering about any little change on the baby monitor, any suspicious silence that might be confused for the cessation of his or her heartbeat. It's terrifying and you don't really get over it until they're at least a year old.
And during that time, you have at least one night when you become 100% convinced the baby is dead. It might just be a sick feeling in your stomach. It's certainly just paranoia, because most likely any actual deaths caused by SIDS catch the parent by surprise. But if they sleep 30% longer than usual, or if there are no noises for a long period of time, or any other scenario your sleep-deprived brain can imagine, you have this conversation with yourself at least once: "Okay, my baby may be dead. But if I go in to check right now, it won't change that fact. All that means is that I will find out this horrible thing that much sooner. So I might as well enjoy these last fleeting hours before my life becomes a permanent waking nightmare."
It's like Schrodinger's baby. The baby is simultaneously alive and dead.
Caye Casas' The Coffee Table is about trying to preserve that innocence for just a little while longer -- when one of the parents knows the baby is dead, but the other does not.
How did this baby die? Well it all came down to a coffee table.
Jesus (David Pareja) and Maria (Estefana de Los Santos) are out shopping for items for the decor of their new apartment, with their infant son Cayetano. Jesus didn't like that name, but Maria chose it, just like she's chosen almost all of their furniture. She promised Jesus he could select the coffee table, but now that he's gotten one in his sights, she wants to renege. It's a tacky glass tabletop propped up by the naked bodies of two gold female figures. They're relatively tastefully designed nudes within the context of nude table legs, but overall, still tacky.
They argue about this, but he ultimately wins out, in part due to the irresponsibly aggressive sales tactics of the salesman (Eduardo Antuna). Among other things, the salesman tells them that he shares a name with their baby boy -- it's an unusual name, so that's doubtful -- that he himself cannot afford such a fine table (but that it's also a bargain), and that the glass top is absolutely, 100% unbreakable. This last seems to seal the deal.
She's still a bit fuming about the turn of events when she gets home, so she goes out to clear her head and get some stuff at the store. Meanwhile, he's assembling the table, whose glass top must be screwed in. Because one of the screws is missing, he calls the store and asks them to deliver an extra. Meanwhile, he's looking after his son solo for the first time ever, and the baby is shrieking his head off.
Um, hold that thought.
We see Jesus and the baby disappear from view as father tries to calmly shush his son. We hear a loud crash. We see broken glass flood into view. And we see -- details thankfully spared -- a small corpse on the ground, which we soon learn has no head.
At first we think papa has succumbed to a temporary moment of insanity, when he just could not handle the screaming and had to make it stop. After all, we know, because he told his wife earlier, that he thought the timing of having children was bad. (A perspective that was certainly disappointing to her, since she appears to be on the wrong side of 40.)
But no, we learn it was just a terrible accident, involving a sheet of glass the salesman had told him, not an hour earlier, was unbreakable.
After five to ten minutes of Jesus breathing heavily and staring in shock, the thrust of the narrative shifts to Jesus' attempts to -- well, not to cover up that this has happened, exactly. Not to find a plausible alternate explanation for how his baby became headless, though obviously the thought went through his mind. But maybe just to delay the inevitable discovery of this most apocalyptic of tragedies for parents, as he decides whether there is any way he can continue living.
And let's just say that Maria -- not to mention his brother (Josep Maria Rivera) and his brother's new 18-year-old girlfriend (Claudia Riera) -- spend quite a lot of time in that apartment before they know anything is wrong other than the fact that Jesus cut his hand badly on the broken glass of the tabletop, therefore explain the large patches of blood on the carpet that he failed to successfully scrub away. In fact, the irony of this turn of events gives Maria the heartiest, most prolonged bout of laughter she has had in some time -- and very possibly the last one she will ever have.
It's absolute agony -- the most exquisite sort of agony -- to watch these characters and their separate understandings of what's actually going on. In the most excruciating twisting of the knife, all part of this film's extreme sense of black comedy, Casas continually adds triggering new turns of events for Jesus. Not only does his wife admit to their guests that their son is reason for life to be worth living, but his brother lets slip that his young girlfriend is pregnant, and they can't wait for the new little girl to play with her cousin Cayetano.
Pareja is a revelation here -- pale, confused, and knowing that his need to delay the inevitable is powerful enough that he simply has to fake some version of normalcy while potentially the remaining moments of his entire life play out. Yes, he is steadily convincing himself that suicide is the only option. But he can't quite let go, wildly trying to imagine if there is any escape from the irrefutable realities staring him in the face.
Although less is required of the other actors as a result of their less intense understanding of what's going on here, each performance is also a minor miracle of its own. In de los Santos we see a woman living through the last moments of normalcy of her life, aware only that her husband is acting a little strange and that it's surprising to see him so cautious about not waking the baby from his nap. The scenario is so shocking that it almost seems like the actress herself should be unable to play these scenes so blithely, knowing what the script has in store for her. Then there are the guests, who are just in the flush of young love -- well, she's young anyway -- and impending parenthood, and never thought this day would contain anything more than an afternoon of festive eating.
And because Casas does have such a wicked black comedy streak, he complicates the situation with a 13-year-old neighbor who has a crush on Jesus. This girl -- who first sees them in the hallway with her mum while they are taking the coffee table up the stairs -- apparently thinks she has some sort of relationship with Jesus, as evidenced by the fact that he liked one of her Instagram photos and she made an attempt to kiss him on the elevator, which he dodged. He likely should have immediately told his wife that this happened, but he did not, and now she's insisting that he tell her about "them." If you don't think this is going to factor in to the finale of the film, you haven't been paying attention to basic screenwriting logic.
We know Maria and the guests are going to learn about what happens, we just don't know how. This is the only part of the movie I won't spoil, and it's the only part of the movie that takes it down from a perfect five out of five stars to only 4.5, since the actual reveal might have missed by just a little bit. Then again, perhaps just being what it's about, the horrible thing it's about, would prevent it from ever attaining a perfect score, because my God.
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