The Pirate Review - Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes)

Fascinating and disturbing, with beautiful cinematography, Abre Los Ojos suffers only from slow pacing

Minor spoilers

My husband rented a copy of Abre Los Ojos (translated title: Open Your Eyes) for a very specific reason and he wasn't ashamed to admit it: he was hoping for "Spanish boobs!"

All right, maybe hubby wasn't renting it just for the hope of seeing exposed mammaries—we both speak Spanish and are trying to keep our vocabularies in good working order—but he is a red-blooded male and not averse to appreciating the female figure in a film. Did he get what he was looking for? Short answer: yep. But this movie turned out to be, pun intended, a true eye-opener on a more psychological level.

Spanish writer and director Alejandro Amenábar tells a Hitchcockian tale of César (Noriega), a handsome, wealthy young playboy whose best friend, Pelayo (Martínez), lives constantly in his shadow. On César's 25th birthday party, Pelayo brings a date, a gorgeous actress named Sofía (Cruz). She immediately catches César's eye, and he uses his gone-south relationship with former lover Nuria (Nimri) as an excuse to flirt with Sofía. He ends up going to her apartment; the next day, Nuria is waiting outside for him in her red Alfa Romeo. When she questions his bravery, César accepts a ride home and Nuria, in a fit of jealousy, crashes the car, killing herself and causing massive cranial damage to César in the process.

After repeated surgeries, physicians manage to pull César's face back together, but he is horribly disfigured. All his money is unable to bring back his looks, and like many very handsome people, César's sense of self-worth is based almost wholly on his appearance. He becomes increasingly incapable of coping with his situation, drinking heavily, pulling away from his friends and becoming a recluse.

Then César's life begins to change. Unexpectedly, Sofía declares her love for him; then the doctors attempt a new surgical technique to reconstruct his face and his former good looks are restored. But that's when the REALLY strange and frightening things start to happen to him. Under the influence of a fatherly psychiatrist (Lera), César begins to attempt to sort out the weird nightmare his life has become.

Revealing any more about the plot would be doing a disservice to the reader, since this movie is basically a psychological thriller with a twist at the end. Amenábar has not only offered up a solid story, but sweetens it with frequently lovely cinematography—a hyper-realistic dreamworld of empty streets, a series of ALMOST identical photographs, a mime's white face makeup slowly dissolving in a downpour—and his filming locations in old Madrid create a perfect framework for the tale.

Casting is superb. Noriega is thoroughly believable as a suave, spoiled rich boy whose life becomes increasingly confusing and horrifying; Cruz exudes a gentle warmth and beauty that places her firmly on the A list of international actresses. (Cruz, incidentally, reprises her role in the 2001 American remake, Vanilla Sky—but please don't waste your time on this jumbled mess; the original is far superior.) Nimri's Nuria is a sultry femme fatale with a sexy, smoky whisper of a voice that opens the film.

Near the end, the pacing does seem to falter; we got the distinct feeling that this film didn't need to be two hours long. Overall, though, Abre Los Ojos is an intriguing, thought-provoking and often disturbing film that questions the nature of reality.

And yes, it has boobs too.

Rated a solid R for nudity ("Boobs! Yeehaw!"), sexual situations, violence and (subtitled) language