In a Glass Cage (Agustí Villaronga, 1987)

[luridedith]

I'm derailing this thread to defend another much maligned favourite of mine but oh well - I thought In A Glass Cage, while being the most horrifying and disturbing film I've ever seen, was beautifully filmed and extremely emotional - the closest I've ever seen a film come to capturing a nightmare. It has a similar dark, hysterical eroticism hanging over it ala Andrzej Zulawski's Possession although it leaves a far nastier aftertaste because of its truly fucked up subject matter. I totally understand why people despise it because it crosses the line for most but I really think it deserves another look (here's a great Kinoeye article defending it and comparing it to Salo to bring the topic back on track).

[colinr0380]

I agree that this is probably better off in a thread devoted to In A Glass Cage. I don't think it is the greatest film in the world but at the same time I'm not as down on it as davidhare. I like the Almodovar on downers comparison - of course the film features Marisa Paredes famous from her roles in a number of Almodovar's films as the sister. It is the kind of film Apt Pupil could have been if it had the guts to push its themes a little further - the obsession of a younger generation with the absolute power over life and death and the ability to indulge in it that they see that their mentors once had, and their wish to recapture some of that milieu for themselves. They also both deal with the younger man choosing an unwilling and embarrassed teacher to learn their forbidden knowledge from.

I don't really think Glass Cage was intending to say anything in general about a gay or straight 'experience' but was much more about giving and receiving of power: from the most basic of having to care from someone in an iron lung, the control and ability to abuse that power it gives; the forcing of influence and ideology onto victims which can then be picked up and run with in unexpected and unintended ways by someone who modifies the ideology to suit their own needs; the abuse of trust children need from adults, either in the boy that is picked up and killed or the sister constantly seeming under a low level threat but revealed more to be watching and learning the tricks of the trade herself. In that sense the film does bear comparison to Salo, but it is much more constructed as entertainment in the horror/thriller genre than Pasolini's film.

I quite like the idea of the Nazi child killer trying to kill himself at the beginning of the film (because of guilt, or just because he's sated himself with licence to do whatever he wants and has nothing more to continue to live for for that reason?) and then becoming completely incapacitated for the rest of the film, facing the ultimate horror of not being in control of his own body and unable to decide whether to watch or not, to kill or spare a life, when he was previously in total control of whatever situation he chose to involve himself in. That lack of control over a situation (no 'safe words' here!) and of his household, already showing through the benevolent dictatorship of his sister, is his true hell, not whether he sees any more deaths.

I'd kind of describe the film as if the brother and sister pair from Flesh For Frankenstein, already completely reprehensible and disgusting but living in a kind of luxury, are visited by a lodger who becomes Frankenstein's assistant and pushes his interests into an area in which even his master becomes nervous and unsure of whether they should continue, but is incapacitated in such a way that he cannot stop the forward march! It is a twisted tale layered on top of an already twisted tale.

While I'm ambivalent about how successful the film is, I would be quite interested in seeing Villaronga's later films 99.9 (which sounds like it has a similarly twisted family dynamic) and El Mar before I make any decision on how I feel about the director's works as a whole.

[Daliah Lavi]

Personally (I sure won't speak for anyone else) I thought this was a work of art. One that didn't follow the usual Spanish psychological drama guidelines; And left me mulling over what I had seen for quite some time, as any boundary pushing creative piece can do.

The fact it's an object of hate, disgust, objection by others means very little to me. I'm far more troubled that the majority of people I've spoken to have no problem with 'The Dark Knight's' UK censor rating (an unrestricted 12 I thank you).

Tis a crying shame 'In A Glass Cage' hasn't received a first rate transfer to home dvd, as the rereleased R1 disc is still a mess.
I think I prefer the director's later film 'El Mar', perhaps a far easier watch due to better pacing. Yet still containing his refreshing eye for visual motifs and darkness in almost every frame.

[Camera Obscura]

I thought it was great. I haven't seen it in a while, so I need a re-viewing in order to say something useful about it right now, but it sure is worth a lengthy discussion.