Staring at Strangers | Dir: Félix Viscarret | ★ ★ ★ ★ ½
After being fired from his carpentry job after 20 years, all Damián (Paco León) wanted to do was to smash something and get away from the place. With his boss on his tail, and dropping his keys under his car, the only place to hide was in a huge antique wardrobe which got sealed and lifted onto the back of a truck.
The audience is in the wardrobe as it goes on a bumpy ride and is then taken upstairs to the apartment belonging to Lucia (Leonor Watling) and Fede (Alex Brendemühl) and their teenage daughter Maria (María Romanillos). Maria describes the wardrobe as being like out of a horror movie but Lucia has fond memories of her childhood closet.
From the confines of the closet, Damián spies on the happy family, coming out when they depart to hurry off to work and school. He eats their food, but then decides to do the dishes and tidy up the house, freaking out Lucia who begins to think that there is a ghost.
To begin with, the proposition is outrageously funny – to find your house has a ghost that does your housework. But if you think about the situation, there is some dark thought processes going on.
Firstly, as the days continue, nobody seems to miss Damián, an only child whose parents are dead and an inability to make friends evidently. Only Lucia notices that the housework is being done and develops a dark fascination with her ghost. Also, Damián starts to interfere with the lives of those in the house.
Damián narrates his closet adventures to an interviewer for a television program and the intensity of the confessional builds as his creepy intrusion into the family’s life escalates. It is an interesting reflection on both Damián and Lucia’s isolated lives with an unexpected ending.
Staring at Strangers screens as part of the Spanish Film Festival screening at Palace Raine Square, Luna Leederville and Luna on SX Cinemas from Thursday 15 June to Wednesday 5 July. See their website for more information.
Lezly Herbert
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