Spain has developed something of a reputation for producing quirky and
idiosyncratic filmmakers and the latest of these is 27-year-old Alejandro
Amenabar. Open Your Eyes, his 1997 thriller just receiving its release in the UK, became his Hollywood calling card, attracting the likes of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman to the young director's next project, The Others (Cruise is executive-producing, Kidman will star).
It's not hard to see why he's in demand. Aiming for complexity rather than
the usual cheap thrills, Amenabar has produced a flashy futuristic
psychological thriller with no special effects and a minimal cast.
The complex plot concerns Cesar (Eduardo Noriega) who apparently has
everything: an inheritance, a fabulous apartment and looks that make the
girls swoon. To top it all, he has just met the woman of his dreams (Penelope
Cruz). But a decision to climb into the car of a woman he previously snubbed
(Najwa Nimri) changes his life as she promptly aims the car through a
barrier and over a cliff.
As a result of the crash, Cesar is horribly disfigured and though plastic
surgeons do their best to reconstruct his face, he is destined to live the
rest of his life as a freak. Or is he? The film cuts to a masked Cesar, now
imprisoned in a psychiatric unit for a murder he can't remember. He claims
to have regained his looks and love, but seems to have lost his grip on
reality.
If this all sounds confused - don't worry. You will be. Through its
structure of a series of interwoven dream-like sequences, as Open Your Eyes progresses it becomes increasingly difficult to decipher what is going on. Is Cesar's hell a dream? Or has he gone mad? Amenabar's attempt to use this method to recreate on screen Cesar's bewildered state of mind is perhaps a little too successful.
While Noriega - along with the rest of the cast - puts in an excellent
performance, the film's final, awkward lurch into an unlikely sci-fi
resolution overshadows the (perhaps too) clever and inventive plot
machinations that precede it. Amenabar has been billed as one of Spain's
hottest young directors, but this effort left me cold.
Reviewed by Monika Maurer
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