Open Your Eyes

Production: José Luis Cuerda (Producer) — Fernando Bovaira (Executive Producer)

Screenplay: Mateo Gil (Screenplay) — Alejandro Amenábar (Screenplay)

Music: Mariano Marín (Original Music Composer)

Cinematography: Hans Burmann (Director of Photography)

César is a very rich and charming young man who inherited his father's restaurant chain and now spends his days between work meetings, travel, entertainment, and beautiful women. His life is, however, destined to change following a terrible car accident caused by one of his lovers who was trying to commit suicide with him. César survives but is horribly disfigured, bitterly discovering that friendship, love, and his life will never be the same again. The boy begins to lose touch with reality, to have strange and disturbing visions until the discovery of an unexpected truth... Second feature film by the promising Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar, who, in addition to directing the film, also wrote the screenplay and composed the musical theme. "Open Your Eyes" is a fantastic brand thriller with a complex structure: the viewer is continually surprised by the multiple flashbacks, the space-time overlaps, the protagonist's vision-revelations, up to the unexpected and surprising ending where everything makes sense. In his homeland, the film obtained a stunning success, even competing with Cameron's "Titanic" at the box office and launching the beautiful and talented Penelope Cruz into the world of international stars, although, to be honest, the most convincing performance is given by the excellent protagonist Eduardo Noriega. It is not a horror film but a disconcerting thriller that can sometimes be unsettling.

An excellent film where dream, reality, illusion and fantasy mix.

In this film, we follow the ordeal of César, a young Spaniard who has everything a young man could want: a comfortable life, money, friends and all the women he wants (although he avoids serious commitments as much as possible). During a birthday party, in which he tries to escape his most recent case, he meets Sofia, a seductive and intelligent young woman who knows how to captivate him. However, his whole life is ruined when he has a car accident, intentionally provoked, and his face is completely disfigured.

If the psychological, mental and physical difficulties caused by such an injury could be enough for a movie script, Amenábar goes even further by mixing this with various considerations about dreams, illusion and memory. Brutally intense, the film goes round and round, and from a certain point, it's hard for us to understand what is true and what is a dream or illusion of the protagonist. The ending is truly disconcerting.

Although the film does not seem very expensive, it has a good cast. Eduardo Noriega does a good dramatic job and is an excellent protagonist. Penélope Cruz, undoubtedly better known as she “made the leap” into American cinema, is still a very young and beautiful actress at this stage, and she is genuine in the work she develops. Chete Lera and Fele Martínez give good support and effort in their roles, and even Najwa Nimri, the supposed villain of the film, is very good at the task given to her.

A good part of the story told comes to us through the flashbacks that accompany César's report to his psychiatrist, and this resource was very well used and very effective. The film mixes well the themes it addresses, balancing very well in all of them and the dialogues are really good, they breathe naturalness and authenticity. Good sets, good costumes and the good choice of shooting locations helped a lot to make the film more visually beautiful, while the cinematography knew how to make the best use of the intense sunlight of the Spanish capital and the beautiful shades of blue in the sky, which contrast sharply with the dense penumbra that the main character seems to prefer.

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OPEN YOUR EYES