CIFF 2012: Sleep Tight

This Spanish horror thriller takes place in an apartment building, and focuses on the live-in concierge Cesar who works there during the day. He seems friendly and helpful enough and caters to his tenants' needs and whims. But we see his dark side at night--he hides in the apartment of a beautiful tenant, Clara, drugs her so she won't wake up, then lies beside her all night, waking in time to leave and pretend life is normal.

Although at first we are led by his actions and narrating dialogue to believe he is a typical stalker, this is not exactly (or not initially) about sex. Cesar is depressed, to the point where he cannot stand that Clara always has a smile on her face. His vendetta against her to is to make her as unhappy as he is.

Cesar's actions against Clara get more and more extreme. He injects chemicals into her lotions to cause a rash. He infests her apartment with bugs. In one scene he is almost caught by Clara's boyfriend. Later we come to know that Cesar has sexually violated Clara without her knowledge.

We see that the neighbor kid across the hall has seen some of this illicit behavior and has been blackmailing Cesar. A curmudgeon tenant has looked into Cesar's past and discovered he has never been able to keep a job, suggesting to us that Cesar has done this many times before. Cesar frames the cleaning lady's son when the police discover the stalker letters. All this causes Cesar to contemplate suicide.
The film hinges on the performance of the main actor Luis Tosar, and he is pretty good. His behavior can come off as pretty affable when needed but his physical looks can get pretty scary at night.  Although the character of Clara is for the most part a player in Cesar's story, I think the actress did an okay job. She is in a lot of the movie so the actress also needed to be beliveable as a sunny character then later when tragedy strikes her, believable enough that Cesar is satisfied he has done his job.

There was also an older actress who played a tenant who doted on her dogs, and in one late scene, when Cesar is at his darkest, he spells out to her that she is destined to die alone, with no partner and no children. The camera focuses on the face of this actress as she hears these words and her performance was pretty remarkable as she hears probably what she already knows and has been unable to face.  It serves to show that Cesar's vendetta is not just for Clara alone.