YBCA: IN A GLASS CAGE

It isn't necessarily time to fulfill a semi-promise made last year, but memories remain of the still-ended film program at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Some memories are stronger than others, and some experiences will stick in the front of my head until I put them down. Some of these posts will celebrate milestones in the film program. This one, however, centers not on the curatorial largesse of Joel Shepard but on a particularly memorable screening. One of the freakiest I've ever attended. Read on...

In A Glass Cage had a three-show run in May 2011 at YBCA. It was a new print that was making the rounds; smaller distributors announce their offerings to various theatres and programmers, and in those days Joel was often the only programmer adventurous enough to jump on some of the more esoteric films thrown his way. (There were a few restored classics over the years that Joel was astonished he landed; he couldn't believe that no other cinema in the Bay Area was as excited as he to show certain films.) The debut film by Spanish filmmaker Agustí Villaronga (who based it on the life of Gilles de Rais), In A Glass Cage tells the story of a decrepit Nazi child molester who falls into the care of one of his former victims. A certain level of controversy still hovered over the film given its rigor, politics, and explicit sex and violence. There were about fifteen of us in the audience, braced for something quiet, disturbing, and confrontational.

Interjection: YBCA's house managers fill out a report form at the end of every event. There's a box to check if everything goes fine and without incident, and a number of spaces to fill in details on anything that goes wrong (facilities things like the room being too cold or too warm, problems brought up by audience members, etc.)

So the movie quietly reveals itself to be an austere, slowburn treatment of its subject matter, creating a grey, humid world in which its characters regard each other with unspoken but deeeeep volumes of hatred, longing, and emotions too complex to express.

About twenty minutes in some guy and his date blow in, making quite a lot of noise as they get acclimatized to the low light of the movie and try to find the best seats. Plenty of space near the door where they could just sit the fuck down and not disturb anybody, but it's almost as if they deliberately pick (after much debate and calculation) the longest path across the space between the door and available seats. There's been very little exposition at this point in the movie, but the newcomers are a little louder than they have to be in trying to catch each other up.

Then the guy, from somewhere in his jacket pocket (which he makes a weird amount of noise trying to find), withdraws a particularly crinkly snack bag (Doritos or something) which he noisily opens and even more noisily starts eating.

Three rows in front of him, a reedy, older moviegoer (a regular I believe - don't recall exactly who but believe I had seen him there before or since), gets up out of his seat, walks to the aisle, walks back to this guy's row, walks up to him, AND SNATCHES THE BAG OUT OF HIS HANDS and storms back to the aisle, back down the aisle to his row, then back to his seat.

The Screening Room at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts seats 94 people, in eight rows of seats. It would be hard for all of this not to be noticed in the average house of your average multiplex, but this shit is EXPLODING and bouncing off the metal walls that line the powderkeg of this little room.

So the latecomer gets out of his seat, goes to the aisle, down the aisle, then up to the snatcher and demands to know what the fuck his problem is. The snatcher tries to make his case while keeping his voice down, God love him, though the particular mood of IN A GLASS CAGE has been pretty much destroyed by this time, as the drama unfolding in the audience has escalated far more quickly than Agustí Villaronga would have ever allowed. All of the moviegoers are completely distracted by the drama unfolding in their midst, which seems to be headed to a violent resolution more quickly than the movie. But someone in a seat near the door has left the room, and soon the house manager has poked her head in and left, and soon after that Security arrives to escort BOTH men from the screening room. (The latecomer's date follows him out.) None of them return, but no one in the audience is on the wavelength of the movie, and though the rest of the screening goes without incident the movie's chances at taking us in were pretty much dashed.

I later found that the latecomer had split from a performance in the Forum (a larger space on the floor below the screening room) and, having announced that the quality of that performance not to his liking, demanded to be let into the movie upstairs since he figured YBCA owed him one.

"Whatever the case," I thought to myself, "she won't be able to check that box tonight."