loading...
Open Your Eyes
1997
Handsome 25-year-old Cesar (Eduardo Noriega) has it all--a successful career, expensive cars, a swank bachelor's pad, and an endless string of beautiful and willing women. Unfortunately, he can't get rid of his latest conquest, Nuria (Najwa Nimri) soon enough. When she crashes his birthday party, Cesar uses his best friend .. Read more
| Starring | Eduardo Noriega, Najwa Nimri, Fele Martinez |
|---|---|
| Director | Alejandro Amenabar |
| Genres | Drama, World Cinema |
loading...
Open Your Eyes
Handsome 25-year-old Cesar (Eduardo Noriega) has it all--a successful career, expensive cars, a swank bachelor's pad, and an endless string of beautiful and willing women. Unfortunately, he can't get rid of his latest conquest, Nuria (Najwa Nimri) soon enough. When she crashes his birthday party, Cesar uses his best friend Pelayo's stunningly attractive girlfriend, Sofia (Penelope Cruz), as a means to her. The next morning, Nuria is waiting in her car outside his apartment and manages to coax him into the vehicle. The next thing Cesar knows, he's wearing a mask to conceal a horrible disfiguration while being interrogated in a prison held on a murder charge. Alejandro Amenabar's thriller distorts both the viewer's and Cesar's perception of reality with a series of mind-bending plot twists, ensuring that this intriguing Spanish production will keep you guessing until its final moments.
| Starring | Eduardo Noriega, Najwa Nimri, Fele Martinez |
|---|---|
| Director | Alejandro Amenabar |
| Studio | Lionsgate |
| Run time | DVD: 1 hr 54 mins Watch now: 1 hr 55 mins |
| Certificate | DVD: , Watch Online: |
| Genres | Drama, World Cinema |
| Language | DVD: Spanish Watch Online: English |
| Released | DVD: 25 Feb 2002 Watch now: 21 Sep 2009 Production year: 1997 |
| Watch now | £2.49 |
| Format | DVD |
-
Critics' reviews (6)
View all -
This dazzling second feature from young Spanish film-maker Alejandro Amenábar stars Eduardo Noriega as wealthy playboy César, whose life begins to unravel following a disfiguring car crash. Noriega's superbly controlled performance conveys both resentment and vulnerability as César strives to make sense of a relentless sequence of increasingly disconcerting events. Criss-crossing genres and referencing such films as Vertigo and Eyes without a Face, this delirious treatise on appearance and reality, dreams and disappointments, requires total concentration right through to its dissatisfyingly glib denouement. Cameron Crowe's remake, Vanilla Sky, stars Tom Cruise in the César role and Penelope Cruz.
-
"...OPEN YOUR EYES is a film with enough intellectual meat on its stylish bones to give more adventurous moviegoers something to chew on afterward..."
-
Most helpful member's review
View all -
27 out of 28 people found this review helpful
Open up your ending
Open your eyes is a mind screw of a movie, it keeps you tense and on edge till the very end and does its best to freak you out along the way which it does a very good job of. You are constantly trying to figure out what is going on but it always manages to keeps you spooked and guessing. It's the sort of film that would give you disturbing nightmares that would wake you up with a silent scream, kicking like a pony. It's superior to "Vanilla Sky" in almost every way, even though the Tom Cruise remake is a scene for scene rip off, even going so far as to getting Penelope Cruz back in to reprise her role. Its as if Tom Cruise said "..ooh I wish I'd been in that film and played opposite her, she's gorgeous... actually I think i'll do just that. " He can, so he does. If I had loads of money I'd remake "The Matrix" with me in it instead of Keanu. Anyway back to "Open Your Eyes" - its main failing is its ending, once you find out what's actually being going on its not half as satisfying as you want it to be and the more you think about it the more it annoys you. If they'd left it more ambiguous it could have been a classic.
-
Most recent members' review
View all -
1 out of 1 person found this review helpful
Compulsive thriller
I haven't seen the Tom Cruise Vanilla Sky remake, so I didn't know what to expect of this film. I found it totally compulsive with a tight plot and a mesmerising central performance from Eduardo Noriega, as Cesar, the spoilt playboy who loses his pretty looks in a car smash. It's clever and stylish, and so involving I quite forgot I was watching a subtitled film, though I wish I knew Spanish so I could appreciate the subtlties of dialogue and narration. I don't see how any remake could better this original version. And the ending felt just right.
-
More like this
View all
Related user collection
Favourite films (11)
80% from 2 members
Buy from the LOVEFiLM shop
-
-
-
Open Your Eyes
Handsome 25-year-old Cesar (Eduardo Noriega) has it all--a successful career, expensive cars, a swank bachelor's pad, and an endless string of beautiful and willing women. Unfortunately, he can't get rid of his latest conquest, Nuria (Najwa Nimri) soon enough. When she crashes his birthday party, ...
-