THE OCCUPANT. (2020) A SPANISH LANGUAGE FILM WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY DAVID PASTOR AND ALEX PASTOR.
PRODUCTION COMPANY: NOSTROMO PICTURES.
STARRING JAVIER GUTIERREZ, MARIO CASAS, BRUNA CUSI AND RUTH DIAZ.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
I really enjoyed this Spanish domestic thriller, despite the fact that they were quite obviously pushing their luck, believability-wise, a time or two. Also, there’s nothing particularly new here, to the point that I kept thinking while I was watching it that I’d seen it before, but it was just that I recognised the tropes used in other films, if you get me. Still a watchable movie though, if you genuinely haven’t seen it before…!
The lead character is a bald, middle-aged advertising executive called Javier Munoz who, at the time we meet him, is looking frantically for a new job as he’s been let go or something. He’s not having much luck, and the only thing he can find to do is an unpaid six-month internship with one of his old advertising buddies as his boss. It’s a position much more suited to a young person starting out but beggars can’t be choosers. He takes the ‘job,’ so at least he’s employed, but there’s more downsizing to be done in his life…
He and his wife Marga and their teenage son, Dani, live in a fabulous rented apartment with a view of the whole city; it’s Barcelona, I think. It nearly kills Javier to do it, but they have to vacate the apartment and move to a much smaller property of theirs which they’ve been renting out to some ‘Asians,’ as they put it themselves.
Marga takes a cleaning job to help out, and Dani moves schools to a non-fee-paying one, so they’re each doing what they can to adjust to their new means. Javier has the most trouble of all of them when it comes to ‘adjusting.’ He can’t believe he’s no longer living in the prestigious apartment overlooking the city in a sweeping panorama.
He still has their former cleaner’s keys to the old apartment. In front of our eyes, Javier does something absolutely crazy-dangerous. He lets himself uninvited into his old home, now occupied by a new family, a successful couple and their young daughter.
He admires their fabulous view, which used to be his fabulous view. He peers into their fridge. He uses their toilet. He does everything but make himself a sandwich in their state-of-the-art kitchen, and the whole time he’s in there, he risks being caught.
But a means of visiting the apartment legitimately presents itself when Javier, who looks like a younger Anthony Hopkins, manoeuvres a meeting with Tomas Andrande, the new lease-holder of the beautiful apartment, at one of Tomas’s weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meets.
Javier fakes an alcohol and drugs dependency and guess who he asks to be his sponsor…? That’s right, the handsome Tomas, who literally has no idea of the world of pain he’s in for now that the sick-minded, twisted Javier has set his sights, not just on Tomas’s gorgeous apartment but on Tomas’s perfect little family as well…
It’s kind of like a reverse version of SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, or THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, or basically any film in which a woman moves into another woman’s house or space and basically tries to take over her life, home, husband, fiancé, kids, pets, the whole flaming works.
It’s poor gorgeous Tomas who’s the victim here of Javier’s lies and sick manipulations and schemes, and it’s like he just gets railroaded by Javier, who has become frighteningly single-minded in the pursuit of his ‘goals,’ which are the things- and people- belonging rightfully to Tomas…
The maddest thing about all this is that Javier already has a family of his own, so why does he want to swap his own wife and teenage son for another man’s wife and little girl?
That little girl might seem adorable and problem-free now, but when she’s Dani’s age, she could be sleeping around, taking crack cocaine, battling an eating disorder and demanding that you call her Harold from now on, pronouns he/him, so think on…!
Some random points. One: The blackmailing paedophile gardener is a truly disgusting individual. Two: Javier’s relationship with his desperately unhappy, overweight son Dani is like Tony Soprano’s with Anthony Junior in THE SOPRANOS. Javier loves the boy, but he wants him not to be fat, lazy and slob-like, getting laughed at by his peers for being tubby, and so he drags him out on an uphill run that makes him vomit. Nice one, jerk… Don’t be expectin’ no Father of the Year trophies in the post anytime soon.
And, finally, Three: Javier has told Lara, Tomas’s long-suffering wife, several blatant lies about himself that are bound to come out in the wash sooner or later. And then where will Javier be? Out on his ear, hopefully.
Also, his treatment of his own family, Marga and Dani, is appalling. And how can he justify cutting off all supports to his poor son? Javier Munoz is a despicable creature, but THE OCCUPANT is a semi-thrilling movie. Catch it if you can; it’s on Netflix now.
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