Sign In / Sign Up

Close Your Eyes

Close Your Eyes
Release date: 2023-08-16
Rating: 7.105
Votes: 110
Genres: Drama, Mystery
Years after his mysterious disappearance, Julio Arenas, a famous Spanish actor, is back in the news thanks to a television program.

Reviews

CinemaSerf

CinemaSerf

We begin by watching a ten minute excerpt from a drama that shortly afterwards discover is just about all there is from the final film of acclaimed Spanish actor "Julio Arenas". He finished filming for the day then was never seen nor heard from again. Many years later, a television journalist "Soriano" (Helena Miquel) invites the film's director "Garay" (Manolo Solo) onto her missing persons television programme with a view to finding out just what happened to him. In best "Crimewatch" style, someone calls into the programme with a possible lead. Might they have found this man after all these years? On the face of it, the story is all a bit predictable. It's the quality of the acting and the writing that puts the meat on the bones, and both Solo and the Jose Coronoado as handyman "Gardel" deliver engagingly well. It is a slow burn of a film, with an emphasis split between the search for the actor and the search of "Garay" for some degree of closure so he can get on with his life rather listlessly spent reading, drinking, smoking and fishing with the fellow residents of his squat. Fans of "Rio Bravo" (1959) might recognise the song he sings with neighbours "Toni" (Dani Téllez) and his expectant wife, and those few moments of the film demonstrate nicely the emotions of friendship, emotion and loneliness director Victor Erice wants to convey for just about all of the principal characters. The conclusion in inconclusive, but it does make you pine a little for the days where even the smallest of towns had it's own cinema. I wonder if anyone should ever make the underpinning movie? This is worth watching.

Movie Recommendation

  • Little Girl Blue
    Little Girl Blue
    2023-11-01
    In 2016, French writer and photographer Carole Achache took her own life. After Carole's death, her daughter Mona Achache, a film director, discovers thousands of photos, letters and recordings that Carole left behind, but these buried secrets make her disappearance even more of an enigma. Through the power of filmmaking and the beauty of incarnation with the help of actress Marion Cotillard, the director brings her mother back to life to retrace her journey and find out who she really was.
    More...
  • Burning Hearts
    Burning Hearts
    2022-09-22
    Puglia. Burnt by the sun and by hatred, the promontory of Gargano is contested by criminals who seem to come from a remote past governed by the law of the jungle. An archaic land reminiscent of the Far West, in which blood is washed away with blood. An old feud between two rival families is rekindled by a forbidden love: the one between Andrea, reluctant heir of the Malatesta, and Marilena, beautiful wife of the boss of the Camporeale clan. A fatal passion that sets the two clans at war again. But Marilena, banished by the Camporeale and prisoner of the Malatesta, disputed and abused, will oppose a fate already written with a mother’s strength.
    More...
  • El Sur
    El Sur
    1983-05-18
    A woman recalls her childhood growing up in the North of Spain, focusing on her relationship with her father.
    More...
  • Beyond Utopia
    Beyond Utopia
    2023-10-23
    A courageous pastor uses his underground network to rescue and aid North Korean families as they risk their lives to embrace freedom.
    More...
  • Morvern Callar
    Morvern Callar
    2002-11-01
    After her boyfriend commits suicide, a young woman attempts to use the unpublished manuscript of a novel and a sum of money he left behind to reinvent her life.
    More...
  • Escape
    Escape
    2024-10-31
    A young man becomes convinced that the solution to all his problems is to live in jail, and he will do whatever it takes to get it.
    More...
  • Armand
    Armand
    2024-09-27
    Armand, a 6-year-old boy, is accused of crossing boundaries against his best friend at elementary school. While no one knows what actually happened between the two boys, the incident triggers a series of events, forcing parents and school staff into a captivating battle of redemption where madness, desire and obsession arise.
    More...
  • Jokes & Cigarettes
    Jokes & Cigarettes
    2023-11-01
    Barcelona, Spain, in the late sixties. Eugenio, a young jeweler who has fallen in love with Conchita, a singer, to the point of learning to play the guitar to accompany her in her performances, will first have to learn to overcome his stage fright.
    More...
  • The Murdered House
    The Murdered House
    1988-02-01
    After World War I, a young ex-soldier, Sébastien Monge, returns to his home village. Ignorant of his past, he learns that, 24 years before, his entire family was slain in their home one stormy night. Only Sébastien, then a four-month old baby, was spared. Whilst Sébastien is being seduced by Charmaine, Dupin is killed by someone else. Sébastien’s next victim, the miller Didon Pujol, is also murdered before he has a chance to take his revenge. Sébastien realises that someone is watching his every move and is going to extraordinary lengths to protect him. But who, and why..?
    More...
  • Anna and the Wolves
    Anna and the Wolves
    1973-06-04
    The young but traveled Ana arrives in a manor in the countryside of Spain to work as nanny of three girls and finds a dysfunctional family.
    More...
  • In the Company of Women
    In the Company of Women
    2023-10-18
    Summer of 1976. Bea is 16 years old and she collaborates with a group of women to make visible the feminist cause and achieve the approval of the right to abortion. The rebellion she feels in the blood will mix with an unexpected feeling that will disrupt her the inner world. Throughout these months, Bea will engage in a very special friendship with Miren, older than her. Her political commitment and her relationship with Miren will turn that summer into a stage that will mark her life forever.
    More...
  • Operation Napoleon
    Operation Napoleon
    2023-01-26
    A modern-day lawyer is sucked into an international conspiracy after being accused of a murder she didn't commit. Her only chance of freedom lies in uncovering the secret of an old German WWII aeroplane, long buried deep beneath the ice, before the CIA.
    More...
  • Firebrand
    Firebrand
    2024-03-27
    Katherine Parr, the sixth wife of King Henry VIII, is named regent while the tyrant battles abroad. When the king returns, increasingly ill and paranoid, Katherine finds herself fighting for her own survival.
    More...
  • The Housemaid
    The Housemaid
    2010-05-13
    Eun-yi is hired as a maid in a mansion owned by a wealthy businessman. He quickly starts seducing his employee who seemingly has little choice but to comply with his sexual advances. Soon the women of the family plot against Eun-yi who must fight an equally devious battle to protect herself.
    More...
  • Ivan's Childhood
    Ivan's Childhood
    1962-05-09
    In WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.
    More...
  • The Boy with Pink Pants
    The Boy with Pink Pants
    2024-10-10
    On 20 November 2012, 15-year-old Andrea Spezzacatena took his own life. It was the first case in Italy of bullying and cyberbullying that led to a minor's suicide. The triggering incident was his choice to wear a pair of red trousers, a gift from his mother, which turned pink due to a washing mishap.
    More...
  • Annie Hall
    Annie Hall
    1977-04-19
    New York comedian Alvy Singer falls in love with the ditsy Annie Hall.
    More...
  • Anora
    Anora
    2024-10-14
    A young sex worker from Brooklyn gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as his parents set out to get the marriage annulled.
    More...
  • Nope
    Nope
    2022-07-20
    Residents in a lonely gulch of inland California bear witness to an uncanny, chilling discovery.
    More...
  • The Grand Budapest Hotel
    The Grand Budapest Hotel
    2014-02-26
    The Grand Budapest Hotel tells of a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars and his friendship with a young employee who becomes his trusted protégé. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting, the battle for an enormous family fortune and the slow and then sudden upheavals that transformed Europe during the first half of the 20th century.
    More...

Similar Movies