In a Nutshell. Mini reviews of movies old and new. No fuss. No spoilers. And often no sleep.

Thursday 4 June 2015

TRAS EL CRISTAL [1987]

aka
In a Glass Cage

Spanish director Agustí Villaronga bravely tackles some disturbing material with his unflinching psychologically horrifying drama, Tras el cristal.
Our minds are dragged kicking & screaming into the story of a former Nazi doctor who performed unspeakable acts on young boys, so he attempts suicide to find himself surviving within the confinement of an iron lung.  Matters are made worse, when a young man, posing as his nurse, grows an unhealthy obsession with the patient and begins copy-catting his acts of the past.  It's a story about the human cruelty, holding one's life in your hands and asks whether or not life or death is a more suitable punishment for one's horrible crimes.  It's slow pace crawls right under your skin with it's foreboding dread and wonderful use of space.  When Villaronga wants to scare you, he uses wide open long shots but when he wants to make you downright uncomfortable he gets a little too close and intimate.  It teeters between compelling psychodrama and immensely shocking horror film but it's so delicately crafted it never seems like it's purely out to offend.  

3½ doses of gasoline out of 5

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