CLOSE YOUR EYES - Mark Reviews Movies

Close Your Eyes, Film Movement

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 5, 2024

How much power do the movies have? That's the ultimate question of co-writer/director Víctor Erice's Close Your Eyes, and while it might not be answered within the film itself, this mystery tale and exploration of memory certainly leaves us pondering the interplay of life and art, in addition to a few other things.

Erice apparently takes a page from his own history here, if only because the story revolves around an unfinished movie about a man's search, via an inexperienced detective, for his daughter, who moved to Shanghai with her mother when she was younger. The plot of the incomplete production is less important from an autobiographical perspective than its mere existence. Erice almost made a movie that involved the Chinese city to some degree, but instead, this is the first narrative feature he has made in more than 30 years.

This is mainly trivia and only important because the central character of Erice and Michel Gaztambide's screenplay is the director of that fictional failed project, which had to stop production after its leading man disappeared only a few days into filming. Erice's own development woes, of course, weren't nearly as dramatic, but it is intriguing to see this as a personal project on some level.

The film is intriguing enough on its own, introducing us to one mystery—the one of the not-quite-a-movie-within-the-film—and completely upending it for the one filmmaker Miguel Garay (Manolo Solo) has to unravel. Like the protagonist of his unfinished and final film, he doesn't set out to do that, but it's not as if he has much else to do with his life at the moment. Besides that, there are worse ways to spend one's time than trying to help a friend.

The friend in question is the missing actor, named Julio Arenas (Jose Coronado), whom we first—and, depending on one's opinion of what actually constitutes a person's identity, only—see in the scenes from the incomplete production. He plays the man called upon to search for the missing daughter of one Mr. Levy (José María Pou), who is dying and wants one final look from his daughter.

The character played by Julio walks away from Levy's lonely estate, and his image freezes mid-stride. For those who worked on the production, this is their last memory of Julio, who disappeared and whose car would be found by a cliff. No other sign of him, including a body, was ever found.

That was 22 years ago when Miguel is approached by a television series that focuses on unsolved cases. Marta (Helena Miquel), the producer and host, wants to interview the filmmaker, who now writes—or tries to, at least—short stories in a small village some hours from Madrid, and use whatever he might have from the failed movie to piece together this decades-old puzzle.

As that happens, what's really going on in the story is Miguel wrestling with the reminder of his friend's disappearance, having some reunions with people he hasn't seen or spoken to in years, and being confronted by his own personal and professional failures in the process. Julio's absence isn't just a case to be solved by some intrepid amateur detective and to be highlighted on TV for entertainment. It left Ana (Ana Torrent), the actor's daughter, without a father. It left a hole for Lola (Soledad Villamil), Julio's lover. It also more or less guaranteed that Miguel would never make another movie—and not just because people in the industry saw the project as a disaster.

There's a flip side to each of these stories, though, that complicates matters. Ana never really saw Julio as much of a father, since he was off shooting whatever movies he could to pay the bills. The daughter now realizes that she recalls his voice more than his face, especially since she refuses to watch any of her father's movies these days. Lola's loneliness has little to do with either Miguel, to whom she was also romantically connected, or Julio, since she was one of many lovers the actor had over the years. Indeed, one of the persistent rumors about his disappearance is that it had to do with an affair with a married woman, whose husband was powerful enough to ensure Julio or his body would never be found.

The man had demons, including alcoholism, but he had depth, too, as Miguel's longtime friend Max (Mario Pardo), a film archivist, notes. He could be a great actor when he put in the effort, but now, these friends have to deal with him disappearing, their own regrets and griefs, and fading with age—just like the notion of film on physical celluloid is becoming obsolete.

This is all setup for what unfolds in the latter end of the story, which seems to put forth the answer to Julio's disappearance. The mystery itself means little without Erice's patience in examining the personal fallout from the actor's absence, as well as how it has come to possess some degree of insignificance in their lives after so long. Given the chance to potentially solve the mystery, Miguel dives into it, but at this point and under the specific circumstances of a key revelation, what good could it do?

It's telling, perhaps, that the only genuine resolution that comes from Close Your Eyes is in regards to Miguel's unfinished movie. There's an ending to that, leaving everything in the middle unseen because it was never made. The middle is where Erice's story exists, in all of complexity, uncertainty, and unresolved pain.

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