Close Your Eyes
Set in contemporary Madrid, an aging filmmaker named Miguel Garay is called upon to recount his memories of working on his final and still unfinished film, “The Farewell Gaze.” During its production, the lead actor and Miguel’s close friend, Julio Arenas, disappeared without a trace, leaving in his wake a mystery that would haunt the lives of everyone associated with the film. Miguel never directed another project, instead living a quiet life as a writer by the coast. He remained reluctant to unravel the mystery surrounding Julio until approached by an investigative television program reviving the case decades later. With careful reflection, he reconnects with the film’s crew, former lovers, and Julio’s daughter, seeking closure for the disappearance and what it meant for all of their lives.
Over three decades after the release of his previous film, revered Spanish auteur Víctor Erice (The Spirit of the Beehive, El Sur, and Dream of Light) returns with a “poignant cinematic swan song” (The Hollywood Reporter). A reflective culmination of Erice’s career in film, Close Your Eyes is a haunting meditation on memory, absence, and the enduring resonance of the moving image.
Cast
- Manolo Solo
- Jose Coronado
- Ana Torrent
- María León
- Helena Miquel
DVD Features
Discs: 1
- "A poignant cinematic swan song."
- "A slow-burn marvel which climaxes in a sequence of overwhelming profundity and mystery."
- "Erice’s fourth feature is a stirring tale about memory, identity, and friendship, and it feels deeply, almost alarmingly personal."
- "A moving mediation on existence, memory, and cinema’s potential to preserve them both."
- "A shimmery, nourishing culmination of ideas and ellipses in a career so elusive as to have taken on a mythic quality, to the point that his latest feels almost dreamed into being."
- "Winningly satisfying and cerebral...."
- "A bittersweet homage to how movies can bring us together and remind us of the past but never bring us back to the people we once were. "
- "It’s hard to envisage a more emotionally overwhelming farewell, if that’s what Close Your Eyes becomes, from a vital, too-often missing, force in world cinema."
- "A passionate, big-issue film from revered Spanish maestro Victor Erice, 'Close Your Eyes' engagingly reflects on art, memory, identity and recapturing time past."
Gallery
Awards & Recognition
Best Director
Cinema Writers Circle Awards, Spain
Best Original Screenplay
Cinema Writers Circle Awards, Spain
Best Supporting Actor
Cinema Writers Circle Awards, Spain
Best Supporting Actress
Cinema Writers Circle Awards, Spain
Best Supporting Actor
Goya Awards
Best Director
International Cinephile Society Awards
Best Picture
International Cinephile Society Awards
Best Non-U.S. Release
Online Film Critics Society Awards
10 Categories
Goya Awards
Cannes Film Festival
Toronto Int'l. Film Festival
San Sebastián Int'l. Film Festival
New York Film Festival
BFI London Film Festival
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