Another excellent offering from De La Iglesia, this is even more of a slow-burning thriller than THE CANNIBAL MAN (1972) but the scenario it conveys of place, characters and situations holds one's attention, even if there is a definite slackening during the last act (picking things up again with a stunning climax that not only marries the REAR WINDOW {1954}-inspired proceedings up to that point to a STRANGERS ON A TRAIN {1951}-type twist but also takes care to produce one additional ace for the finale!) and which now seems to be something of a directorial trait.
The GLASS CEILING, in fact, is confidently Hitchcockian but also presenting concerns that obviously interested the film-maker, such as what sort of mischief may be going on within the walls of a house (which, in this case, is amplified by making the central setting a condominium). However, the script merely uses fanciful conjecture as a means to an end, which is another character study of a lonely figure (here leading lady Carmen Sevilla, and for which performance she won the Cinema Writers Circle award) whose grip on reality is quickly fading (depicted via a notable dream sequence) and how the people she comes into contact with react to this (there is even a disturbing subtext, which one hopes is not quite true, of landowning studs and horny errand-boys preying on such abandoned wives!). Still, unlike THE CANNIBAL MAN, the protagonist is now a victim who soon finds that she cannot really trust anyone, not even family, preferring to keep company with her amiable white cat (which, unfortunately, comes to a sticky end).
Once again, the cast includes lovely Emma Cohen: at first, I thought she would have an even lesser role than in CANNIBAL, since her name is much further down the cast list this time around, but also because she plays the unflattering part of a farmer's daughter delivering milk to the various tenants – however, enamored of the landlord, she also frequently pays him visits at the condominium's back-yard, where he conducts his extracurricular activity of sculpting. Though he certainly does not discourage her attentions (even accepting to be fed – and playfully sprayed in – milk by her directly from a cow's teat!), the man really favors Sevilla (to the point of taking the latter horse-riding in order to alleviate her ennui), so that Cohen is cross when a sculpture he has made of her luscious body (voyeuristically caught by camera while the girl is sleeping in the nude, one more of the landlord's hobbies, which he also directs at Sevilla and another pivotal female character, thus linking the film to the remarkable "Cannibal" flick I watched at the very start of this "Halloween Challenge", WELCOME TO ARROW BEACH {1974}) actually sports SevIlla's head!
However, Cohen's character still vanishes from the proceedings well before the end – which serves to put at center-stage an attractive neighbor of Sevilla's, whom the latter suspects all through the picture of having committed foul play upon her invalid husband (whose body the heroine frantically suspects of being stashed either in the back-yard or the couple's own fridge!), even contriving to periodically check with the bus depot whether he was seen leaving town as his spouse claims.
