Reminiscent of Roman Polanski’s ‘Carnage’, THE PEOPLE UPSTAIRS is somewhat less lacerating and more farcical and brings another layer of meaning to the term ‘Love Thy Neighbour’.
A sort of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf’ in sheep’s clothing, opens with a domestic confrontation.
Julio and Ana have been together for over fifteen years. They have a daughter but the fizz has gone out of their relationship, replaced with friction fed by Julio’s smart arse misanthrope fuelled by the couple who have moved into their apartment block and delight in mad, noisy bonking.
Just to conflate the conflict, Ana springs on Julio as he returns home from work as a music teacher that she has invited the upstairs neighbours over. Salva and Laura are slightly younger than them and a lot more social, but the constant moaning and groaning coming from their apartment has become a source of arguments for Julio and Ana… perhaps it’s jealousy, they wish their own sex life was as spicy.
This evening, the neighbours will become both the instigators and victims of an emotional tsunami, brought on by an unusual and surprising proposal. The four neighbours can’t help but get caught up in an evening of excess and catharsis.
Javier Camara as Julio seeps with superiority, a masking mechanism to his frustration at not being a jobbing musician rather than a music teacher in a stultifying school environment. Sardonic, sneering, sarcastic and quite insufferable, his articulation is his armoury, an artillery of acerbic wit.
Belen Cuesta as Ana stoically tries to stem her husband’s slide into the snide misanthrope that is capsizing their marriage and causing fissure in their family.
As the neighbouring swinger couple, Alberto San Juan and Griselda Siciliani provide screwball comic counterpoint.
Directed by Cesc Gay who gave us the truly tremendous ‘Truman’ a few years ago, THE PEOPLE UPSTAIRS puts a microscope on marriage, a Bunsen burner under the beaker of complacency, and brings all manner of emotional elements to the boil.
Spanish with English subtitles,THE PEOPLE UPSTAIRS starts in cinemas this Thursday 11th February,2021.