AKA Abre Los Ojos. The film that inspired Vanilla Sky and rated the far superior of the two, Open Your Eyes is a combination of sci-fi, tragic love story and psychological thriller. Eduardo Noriega stars as Cesar, the hideously disfigured former playboy whose love for beauty Sofia (Penelope Cruz) is the catalyst for a twisted tale where dream and reality collide. With a fast moving plot and several bizarre twists this film keeps you guessing until the final startling climax.
Cesar (Eduardo Noriega) is the handsome heir to an industrial fortune, living what appears to be a dream life: a string of beautiful lovers swooning at his looks, a ne... more >
Cesar (Eduardo Noriega) is the handsome heir to an industrial fortune, living what appears to be a dream life: a string of beautiful lovers swooning at his looks, a new relationship with his best friend’s girl, the sweet Sofia (Penelope Cruz), three cars in the garage, and money in the bank. But after one of his mistresses decides to test his faithlessness by driving them both off the road, he wakes disfigured, and with the surface of the world on which he previously so securely stepped now radically altered.
This strange and intriguing Alejandro Amenabar film is a modernist piece on the dangers of post-modernity, as the hero finds his existence under threat from a mob whose shifting identities and new technologies are wiping reality and pulling the rug from beneath his feet. Noriega, his floppy-dark hair useful for concealing his often hidden features, makes for both a convincing playboy and - following his comeuppance - a moving monster, standing motionless in the rain to gaze upon the Sofia who once looked up to him; if Cruz is conventionally attractive enough to now make it as a Hollywood actress, well, her looks are never called into question in the same way as her co-star’s.
Amenabar plays some audacious tricks on his audience, more fascinating than frustrating, as he pulls back from the firm convictions of what looks to be a convoluted thriller set-up to reveal sci-fi cityscapes of breathtaking architecture. Like so many films today, this borrows bits of business from other movies and tries to pass them off as fresh and resonant, mostly succeeding: the corporate conspiracy in which Cesar looks to be caught up in (involving some shadowy, unseen "partners") is interesting on its own, but Amenabar gives the Frankenstein story at the film’s heart a European tenderness that recalls Eyes Without A Face or Cyrano De Bergerac, and which serves to make Open Your Eyes’ fragile realities - of masks and scars - affecting and unusually powerful.
