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Better than "Vanilla Sky"
by CarlosC (movies profile)
Mar 23, 2005
5
of
5 people found this review helpful
"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?" That was Edgar Allan Poe's question in 1827 and, if Poe were alive today, he would probably like ABRE LOS OJOS (OPEN YOUR EYES) a lot. EYES wallows in Poe's favorite motifs: madness; grotesquerie; a hero who perpetually mourns a lost love; and, who thinks about morbid things more than he probably should. Cesar (Eduardo Noriega) goes from handsome gigolo to deformed outcast after a jealous ex-lover (Najwa Nimri) tries to kill him by crashing the car they are riding. Eventually, it becomes clear that the entire story is being remembered from some future vantagepoint, when the characters know more than the audience presently knows. And, of course, at some point, the audience catches up with the characters and everyone treads virgin turf. OPEN YOUR EYES is such an unusual film that critics struggle with comparisons that will give readers a true sense of the movie. I guess, the most obvious comparisons are THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1926; mentioned by name in the film), for an antihero whose hideous deformity leads him to become monstruous; and THE MATRIX (1999), for a recent example of how science-fiction commingles fantasy with reality. In fairness, OPEN YOUR EYES is not quite as complicated as some critics make it seem. Cesar (Noriega) is an incorrigible playboy. He's trying to lose one girl (Nimri) by pursuing another (Penélope Cruz), who happens to be his best friend's girlfriend. Scruples schmooples! He plows right ahead without thinking of the repercussions to anyone else's life. His ex-girlfriend takes the same attitude to driving the car that they're in, and he ends up horribly deformed. He finds himself suddenly unattractive, and rejected by a cold, harsh world -- which includes the woman of his dreams (Cruz). But, then, he suddenly gets his old face back, he gets his old girl back, and he starts to think that he must be dreaming. Here, the movie switches gears from PHANTOM to MATRIX. Actually, madness was also a part of the PHANTOM's story, but the execution is what is unique, here. That's all well and good, but I would have rated this movie a whole point higher if it had been thirty minutes shorter. There is, in fact, no reason for it to be so long. The length, compounded by ever-widening boundaries of the film's reality, tests the limits of our suspension of disbelief, and weakens the movie. Nevertheless, the idea is intriguing and the actors are all fresh and attractive -- especially, the leads. The editing is a bit jumpy when it should be more deliberate, though. And, viewer beware: The subtitles are atrocious. They spoil one of this film's most self-assured assets -- the colorful Spanish dialogue. (Carlos Colorado) |
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