YOUNG DREAMS
OPEN YOUR EYES (*ABRE LOS OJOS*) Directed by Alejandro Amenabar Screenplay by Amenabar & Mateo Gil With Eduardo Noriega, Penelope Cruz De Vargas R 110 min. Subtitles
"Open Your Eyes" is the picture Alfred Hitchcock might have made if he were very young and Spanish and in film school today. It's a twisty, multi- leveled succession of screens and masks (literally and figuratively) that takes on identity and reality with all the earnest passion of a late-night bull session among college kids who are flirting with the idea of switching majors to Philosophy.
Eduardo Noriega is Cesar, a young Lothario who makes it a point of honor never to sleep with the same woman twice, until he meets his best friend's new girl Sofia (Penelope Cruz of "The Hi-Lo Country") and falls madly in love. Unfortunately, his wild oats have sown a bitter harvest with Nuria (Najwa Nimri), a recent one-night stand who is so obstinate about trying to keep him that she drives her car off a cliff, killing herself and horribly disfiguring his once-pretty face.
As time and reality scramble, we find Cesar scrunched on the floor of a cell in a psychiatric prison wearing a mask to conceal his deformed face and amnesia to conceal who it is he's killed (and why and how), while his doctor (Chete Lera) tries to peel away these coverings. We go back to pick up key moments of the story, some of them obviously dreams, some of them apparently real, with the distinction becoming more and more blurred.
The 27-year-old tyro Amenabar has the talent to dress his story up handsomely and twirl it with dazzling flourishes, but his immaturity shows through and becomes more and more pronounced as he reels toward the finish line. Masks play a big part in his legend, and he's partial to repeated lines of dialogue ("Can't you tell dreams from reality?") that resonate with meaning. Cryonics also play a big part, to fuzz the line between life and death just as dreams and reality are confounded and confused.
The Hitchcock thing is a conscious embrace -- an homage, you would say, that Amenabar overtly acknowledges when at the end his hero is teetering on the ledge of a skyscraper and says "I forgot, I get vertigo."
Forget this. Get "Vertigo".
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