From that traumatic opening Spanish director Agusti Villaronga's film cuts to still images from the Holocaust, the historical event that first allowed former Nazi doctor Klaus to give his sadism full expression. In the death camps, Klaus's province was the torture, and eventually rape, of young children. In his expatriate life in 1950s Catalonia, Klaus had continued his nightmarish proclivities.
Now confined since his fall from the tower to an iron lung, Klaus is the helpless ward of his caretakers, his unhappy, unpleasant wife Griselda (Marisa Paredes) and his young daughter Rena (Gisele Echevarria). Immediately unlikable because of her knowledge of the experiments her husband has done on children during the war, Griselda remains ignorant of how the tortures have continued outside the prison camps in present day Catalonia. Though Griselda is anxious for a nurse to relieve her of her horrible duties caring for Klaus she is startled when a beautiful young man Angelo (David Sust) shows up out of the blue to volunteer as a nurse for Klaus. Angelo claims to have worked in a hospital but Griselda has her doubts, and even stages a test to prove Angelo is not who he claims to be.
Surprisingly, Klaus asks Angelo to stay despite clear evidence he knows nothing of medicine. What Angelo does know, however, is that Klaus is a pedophile and a murderer and he is blackmailing him with that knowledge. The boy becomes the family's tormentor, taking advantage of their solitude and the vulnerability of this foreign born family in a strange country, caring for a sick man. As the film escalates into a terrifying new dimension, Angelo becomes the fresh oppressor in the home, terrorizing Griselda and becoming a strange new father figure for Rena. Soon he has dismissed the maid Jornalera (Imma Colomer) and taken over sole control of the house and its occupants. Angelo begins to read excerpts from Klaus's own diaries, detailing the sadistic tortures he subjected his concentration camp victims to and confessing of the thrill of their murders, "it was as if I was intimately joining death."
But even more terrifying than anything Angelo finds in Klaus's diary is that Alberto has begun to emulate Klaus. He turns the mansion into a WWII concentration camp with chicken and concertina wire and bonfires. Angelo dons Nazi black and sunglasses. He reenacts scenes from Klaus's diary using young village boys he lures back to the mansion he has transformed into a claustrophobic chamber of terror. Angelo's plans and his need for revenge are unclear, but any expectation of what will happen next is routinely shattered by the shape-shifting nature of Villaronga's screenplay.
A Spanish gothic and singular mix of art and exploitation, In a Glass Cage can suggest a Hammer horror film married to Roman Polanski's Death and the Maiden (1994) and the slick indigo ambiance of Jean-Jacques Beineix's Diva (1981). In a Glass Cage is distinguished by a set and costume design that complement the fun house mirror psychology of the film itself. Griselda slinks around the mansion in a blood red robe momentarily cutting the house oxygen to stop her husband's breathing, playing with the notion of killing him. Much of the film's action is orchestrated to the insistent, wheezing sound of Klaus's pulsating iron lung and the skin-crawling, emotionally remote score by Javier Navarrete.
Part of the unnerving power of In a Glass Cage is in large part due to an unsettling performance by German actor Gunter Meisner, perhaps best remembered as Mr. Slugworth in the 1971 creepy children's classic Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Not surprisingly, Meisner--who died in 1994--has also played Adolf Hitler in several films. With his sinister grin, eyes that hint of hidden sadism and icy visage no matter what the circumstance, Meisner has a perverse quality reminiscent of cult actors Klaus Kinski or Udo Kier. Not to be outdone is David Sust as Angelo, reminiscent of the dead-eyed sociopath played by Anthony Perkins in Psycho (1960). But all of the actors are up to the task of making this an atmospherically nightmarish film. As Griselda, actress Marisa Paredes gives another layer of The Night Porter (1974) meets Pier Paolo Passonlini Euro decadence to the film with her marceled blonde hair, black stockings and cruel streak. As Rena, Gisella Echavarria brings a childish innocence but also a believable vein of self-preservation to her role. A child forced to stand by and watch adult misbehavior, Rena watches her mother and father's house being destroyed by Angelo who is both her playmate and her tormentor. Director Villaronga is certainly aware of the layers of human psychology at work, especially in extreme situations of isolation and fear. Rena also becomes a stand-in for the audience. She is paralyzed by fear at Angelo's escalating violence, but also continues to return to the mansion, perhaps aware Angelo is her last link to her parents and any idea of home she ever had.
In a Glass Cage has rightly earned a reputation as one of the most disturbing films in existence, largely because of its excruciating, difficult to watch scenes of the torture and murder of children. Not for the faint of heart, Villaronga forces viewers to consider the infectious nature of cruelty and what director Villaronga calls "the loss of emotion."
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by Felicia Feaster
