The Coffee Table (La mesita del comedor in the original Spanish) is a gonzo bad taste very black comedy that’s sat down and wracked its brains as to what could be the very worst situation that could befall a couple with a new baby, and then gone there, stayed there and started sending posts back to the rest of us.
“My guess is you have never… seen a movie as black as this one,” no less than Stephen King opined after having seen it. It’s now been picked up by Screambox, who with films as bleak and out there as this might be on the verge of starting to give Shudder a run for their money when it comes to spotting emerging talent.
It’s the brainchild of Caye Casas, who shot the whole thing in about ten days, mostly at a friend’s house, where the terrible thing (which I will not describe) happens while new mother María is out shopping and new father Jésus stays at home with the baby, still assembling the coffee table that is the film’s great piece of dramatic deflection.
It looks at first like it’s going to be a forensic unpicking of male/female relations, especially in the opening scene where Jésus and María are buying the coffee table from an anxious salesman, who has spotted that Jésus really wants this strange item with an “indestructible” glass tabletop supported by two faux-gold naked women. His wife/girlfriend/partner María not so much. It is hideous, she quite rightly says.
Jésus and María – names made for suffering – are played by David Pareja and Estefanía de los Santos, he indeed Messiah-like in his long dark hair and beard, she possessed of one of those rasping Spanish voices ideal for expressing contempt, of which there is much early on. Theirs are lovely and carefully judged performances shading from the early scenes, where Jésus looks like the reluctant partner in a relationship sustained almost entirely by his partner’s desire to be a mother, to the late ones, where everything has been thrown into stark relief by The Very Bad Thing.
To give a hint – there’s quite a bit of blood, and the tabletop isn’t shatterproof as advertised, and there is much emoting for Pareja to do, while de los Santos gets to twitter about, since María is blithely unaware of what’s happened while she’s been out. It’s this juxtaposition that Casas mines for laughs.
Casas throws in a couple of other ingredients. The strange girl Ruth from upstairs, a 13-year-old with the hots for Jésus who is trying to inveigle him into a Lolita honey trap using all the dirty language she can muster. Big props here to Gala Flores, amazingly funny as the deadpan Ruth.
Everyone in this film seems to have the hots for Jésus though. When he goes upstairs to borrow cleaning materials because blood is hard to remove from a shagpile carpet, it’s not just Ruth who’s trying to get into his pants – he firmly and politely resists, resists, resists – but also her mother (Cristina Dilla). Later, when Jésus’s brother Carlos (Josep Maria Riera) and his young girlfriend Cristina (Claudia Riera) come around for dinner, Cristina is also casting furtive glances at Jésus.
Perhaps Casas should have left all this stuff for another film more about male and female relationships and the skewed dynamics of desire. As it stands, this subplot – good though it is – chokes up his basic premise a bit. Or maybe he just didn’t know what to do with the Very Bad Thing once he had unveiled it. The big criticism to make about this film is that it doesn’t so much develop in its mid section as slide about.
But it all comes good – bad, really – in the end, when María finally discovers what’s happened while she was out doing the shopping. Cue Morricone choirs and twangy guitar and much silent screaming.
The Coffee Table – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
