Imagine if an actor's director like Eric Rohmer--whose films consist almost entirely of conversation between pairs or small groups of people--made a film that incorporated elements from movies like Dark City, eXistenZ, The Thirteenth Floor, The Truman Show, and Total Recall. The result might resemble Alejandro Amenabar's remarkable second feature, Open Your Eyes, which favors ideas over effects and offers twist upon twist with mind-warping agility. This film rewards multiple viewings, pushing the viewer toward one perception of reality, then switching to another until reality itself is called into question. Melodrama, love story, and psychological thriller combine with a dash of science fiction, forming a plot that is both disorienting and deceptively precise.
Set in Madrid, the story defies description, but this much can be revealed: young, handsome Cesar (Eduardo Noriega) is vain, rich, charming, and--following a botched suicide-murder scheme by a jilted lover--horribly disfigured. He'd fallen in love with Sofia (Penélope Cruz) but is now an embittered husk of his former self, stuck in a "psychiatric penitentiary" on a murder charge and hiding behind an expressionless mask. His reality has crumbled, but as the film's agenda is gradually revealed, we realize that there are other factors in play. Exposing that agenda would be a criminal offense against those who haven't seen the film; suffice it to say that Open Your Eyes takes you into the twilight zone and beyond, and does so cleverly enough to prompt Tom Cruise to produce and star in an English-language remake, Vanilla Sky. The 2001 remake, directed by Cameron Crowe, costars Cameron Diaz and Penélope Cruz, who reprises her original role. --Jeff Shannon
2.
Handsome 25-year-old César (Eduardo Noriega) has it all--a successful career, expensive cars, a swank bachelor's pad, and an endless string of beautiful and willing women. Unfortunately, he can't get rid of his latest conquest, Nuria (Najwa Nimri) soon enough. When she crashes his birthday party, César uses his best friend Pelayo's stunningly attractive girlfriend, Sofia (Penélope Cruz), as a means to her. The next morning, Nuria is waiting in her car outside his apartment and manages to coax him into the vehicle. The next thing César knows, he's wearing a mask to conceal a horrible disfiguration while being interrogated in a prison held on a murder charge. Alejandro Amenábar's thriller distorts both the viewer's and César's perception of reality with a series of mind-bending plot twists, ensuring that this intriguing Spanish production will keep you guessing until its final moments.
3.
An imprisoned man who hides his face behind a mask is telling his story, as a flashback, to a psychiatrist: His name is César, he is an orphan but he had inherited a fortune from his parents and used to live in a luxurious house of his his own. He was also very handsome and a renowned womanizer. His best friend, Pelayo, was jealous of him, because he was not very successful with girls. But one night, Pelayo showed up in one of César's parties with a beautiful woman named Sofía. When César met her and talked to her for a while, he began to feel something he had never felt before: he was falling in love. And, although she was supposed to be Pelayo's girlfriend, he tried to conquer her, spending that night at her home. But Nuria, with whom César had his last affair, was very jealous; he went to pick him up in her car the next morning, and commited suicide by ramming it into a tree. César survived the crash, but his face was hideously disfigured, his beauty gone. The doctors said they couldn't help him. He was very depressed, and still in love with Sofía. One night he went out with her and Pelayo, and he felt that they were very uncomfortable with him. But the morning after, his luck seemed to change completely: Sofía came to him, saying that it was him who she really loved, and the doctors called him and told him that, with a revolutionary new technique, they could rebuild his face, which they did. César was happier than ever; but that's when the really strange and scary things started to happen, and César found out that the real nightmare had only just began for him...
4.
Open Your Eyes ("Abre Los Ojos") is a film that may give anyone who has seen Tom Cruise's Vanilla Sky (2001) déjà vu. Indeed, the Hollywood version is an inferior remake of this superb Spanish original. The plots of the two movies are virtually the same--Penelope Cruz even plays the same role in both--but here everything is done with rather more European subtlety and intelligence. It's also easy to see how the part of a good-looking urban playboy whose life is thrown into crisis must have appealed to Cruise, as Eduardo Noriega's star turn here seems a tailor-made template for the American superstar.
After a car accident, which leaves Noriega's character seriously disfigured, he finds himself in an almost literal nightmare charged with murder and beset by a memory so unreliable the very identity of the people around him shifts. Like the novels of Christopher Priest--particularly The Affirmation and The Glamour--this is a tale with strong science-fictional appeal, about the nature of personality, memory and identity. Powerfully written, scored and directed by Alejandro Amanabar (The Others), Open Your Eyes is a delirious, erotic and stylish thriller whose recursive ending provides its own sequel. It's the best head-trip this side of Memento and definitely not to be confused with Tom Cruise's similarly titled Eyes Wide Shut.
On the DVD:Open Your Eyes on DVD has no features of any kind, with the film presented in the original Spanish with large, easy-to-read yellow subtitles imposed directly onto the print itself and no option to turn them off. The sound is good, well-balanced stereo and the picture--presented non-anamorphically at 1.77:1--is clear, detailed and mostly lacking in grain. --Gary S Dalkin
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