Abre Los Ojos

(1997)
Directed by: Alejandro Amenabar

Eduardo Noriega - Cesar
Penelope Cruz – Sofia
Chete Lera – Antonio
Fele Marinez – Pelayo
Najwa Nimri - Nuria

This director is fast becoming one of my favorites. Maybe it is because he keeps you guessing until the end or perhaps it is his down-to-earth characters going through extremely difficult circumstances. Its probably all these things that make me like this director’s style.

If you’ve seen Vanilla Sky then Abre Los Ojos will seem very familiar to you. In fact Vanilla Sky is pretty much just the English version (as opposed to a Spanish version set in Madrid), though not as good (I have seen it). Penelope Cruz stars in both and does an equally good job in both.

As in both stories a wealthy heir playboy Cesar, falls for Penelope Cruz’s character Sofia. He doesn’t really care that his best friend Antonio likes the girl. At first he just sees her as a prize but supposedly falls for her. Antonio is altogether a little too forgiving and we feel that the scales will soon tip out of his favor - but instead of tipping they crash literally. Cesar’s psycho “girlfriend” Nuria picks him up and purposefully drives off the road smashing the car into a wall. Now the once handsome Cesar is disfigured horribly and Sofia wants nothing to do with him. But then again, Cesar wants nothing to do with himself - he thinks he is a monster and sulks his days away. The doctors can’t do anything but give him a mask to wear - which I would think would also make people stare.

Anyways we learn all this as he is talking to a psychiatrist at an insane asylum. We also learn that he found out about cryogenics. ***warning plot spoiler*** He doesn’t want to live his life anymore and out of desperation signs a contract where his body is frozen cryogenically. In addition he takes the option of having dreams that “continue” his life while he is indefinitely frozen. The dreams “splice” into his memories so that it seems like he never died. But we know something is utterly wrong anyway when Sofia stars falling for him and his friend is like “so what? She’s not that good anyway.” Yeah right buddy, she’s just Penelope Cruz. There is a clue to what will happen though, you just have to be observant. The finale takes him back to the cryogenics company where dying means waking up and he must make a decision whether to remain in a dream world or wake up to a new reality. This brings up the age old debate of how do we know that our lives really aren’t real and not some cleverly devised dream? (see The Matrix) After all when you are dreaming you don’t think it’s a dream, but rather you take it for reality. Well, that’s enough of this, I’m going to go to bed and wake up now…

3 ½ stars