Close Your Eyes
When former film director Miguel Garay (Manolo Solo, "Pan's Labyrinth," "Biutiful") is contacted by Marta Soriano (Helena Miquel) from the television investigative series ‘Unresolved Cases,’ he’s not entirely sure he wants to reopen the mystery about the disappearance of his leading man, Julio Arenas (Jose Coronado), during the shooting of his unfinished film “The Farewell Gaze,” twenty years ago but he needs the money they are offering. As he contacts colleagues still living as well as his old friend’s daughter, Ana (Ana Torrent, "The Spirit of the Beehive"), their various speculations will be upended when Miguel hears something unexpected he is compelled to investigate in “Close Your Eyes.”
Laura's Review: B+
Cowriter (with Michel Gaztambide)/director Victor Erice ("The Spirit of the Beehive") hasn’t made a feature film since his second, 1983’s “El Sur,” so it this latest has been highly anticipated. It shares many of the themes of his first two such as father-daughter relationships, memory and Erice’s love for cinema itself, something he declares with a magician’s misdirection in the opening moments of this one.
That would be a scene from the 1948, Triste le Roy French chateau-set “The Farewell Gaze,” in which Mr. Levy (José María Pou, "Blancanieves"), clad in a wine colored robe and embroidered Uzbek cap and tended to by valet Lin Yu (Kao Chenmin) receives a Mr. Franche (Coronado) and asks him to travel to Shanghai to retrieve his fourteen year-old daughter Judith (Venecia Franco), ‘the only person who looks at him differently.’ As Franche leaves the chateau, Erice freezes the frame, a point perhaps where most last saw Julio, and jumps to 2012 Madrid.
There is an immediate contrast between ‘film’ and ‘reality,’ Miguel’s “Gaze” lushly photographed with cool, desaturated, but rich colors, the camera largely static whereas modern day is bright with more movement and close-ups (cinematography by Valentín Álvarez). Miguel will tell Marta that the film’s producer, cameraman and star are all dead and when she produces a picture from a prison yard featuring a young Julio and Miguel, he will acknowledge it as well known, his old friend having been caught up in what we can assume were his anti-Franco leanings because they shared an apartment. Marta will also ask if Miguel knows Julio’s daughter, Ana, who has rejected their attempts to speak with her – could he call her?
Miguel will, meeting her in the cafeteria of the Prado Museum, where she works as a guide, but while she is happy to reconnect with her father’s old friend and wishes to stay in touch, she says her father, a known womanizer, left her with nothing to hold onto except a doll and has no desire to be involved in the show. She notes a journalist claims to have seen her father with a woman in a car and wonders why that woman has never come forward, but Miguel notes the journo as a ‘shady character.’ Most theorize an accidental death, Julio’s shoes found at the top of a cliff, or, as Miguel does, a desire to disappear.
But first he visits Max Roca (Mario Pardo), the editor of the film, who has preserved an outtake reel and one he cut together, which the two take pleasure in viewing. Then, wandering down a street, he will find his old novel, ‘The Ruins,’ inscribed by him to Lola San Román (Soledad Villamil, "The Secret in Their Eyes"), the girlfriend who left him for Julio and who he manages to locate, vacationing in Madrid. Marta interviews that ‘shady journalist,’ Tico Mayoral (Antonio Dechent, "Intacto"), who speculates Julio’s affair with a ‘higher up’s’ wife resulted in a political hit.
Erice’s film requires some patience as he meanders about a bit too much in an indulgent two hours and forty-nine minute run time, spending time with Miguel back at his beachfront squat, but while this interlude is too long, it provides a parallel when we do eventually find out what happened to Julio. Miguel will make one fantastic discovery in the contents of a cigar box which suggest Julio may have completed Mr. Franche’s quest. Erice will once again return to the power of film, the cast of loosely connected characters caught in Miguel’s net (which will include two nuns (Petra Martínez, "Bad Education,” and Ana Maria) and a social worker (María León) all focused on the light projected onto a screen in the dark where Mr. Franche returns a Eurasian girl to Mr. Levy. ‘My name is Qiao Shu.’ The unfinished film has helped solve a mystery.
Robin's Review: B
Film Movement releases "Close Your Eyes" in NY theaters on 8/23/24, expanding in subsequent weeks. Click here for play dates.
