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Open Your Eyes (1997 film)

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Wikipedia article




'Open Your Eyes' is a 1997 Spanish film co-written, co-scored and directed by Alejandro Amenbar and co-written by Mateo Gil. It stars Eduardo Noriega, Penlope Cruz, Chete Lera, Fele Martnez and Najwa Nimri. In 2002, 'Open Your Eyes' was ranked no. 84 in the Top 100 Sci-Fi List by the Online Film Critics Society.[http://www.ofcs.org/ofcs-top-100-top-100-sci-fi-films Top 100 Sci-Fi List], Online Film Critics Society

The movie's intersecting planes of dream and reality have prompted some critics to suggest comparisons to Caldern's play 'Life Is a Dream' (, 1635). An American remake entitled 'Vanilla Sky', directed by Cameron Crowe, was released in 2001, with Penlope Cruz reprising her role.

Plot



A handsome young man wakes up to a female voice telling him to open his eyes. He drives to an empty city. He wakes again, this time to a woman in his bed. He tells her not to leave him messages on his alarm clock.

From a prison cell in Madrid, the 25-year-old man, Csar (Eduardo Noriega), tells his story to psychiatrist Antonio (Chete Lera) while wearing a prosthetic mask. Flashbacks reveal the following events: Good-looking Csar is attractive to women. At his birthday party, he flirts with Sofa (Penlope Cruz), his best friend Pelayo's (Fele Martinez) date. Later, he takes her home and stays the night, but they do not sleep together. The next morning, Csar's obsessive ex-lover Nuria (Najwa Nimri) pulls up outside Sofa's flat, offering him a ride and sex. On the way to her house, however, she crashes the car with the intent to kill them both. Csar survives the crash but is horribly disfigured, beyond the help of cosmetic surgery, so he decides to wear a mask to conceal his face. Sofa cannot bear to see him and tries to keep her distance.

After Csar's disfigurement, he begins to have a series of disorienting experiences. Drunk, Csar falls asleep in the street. On awakening, everything has changed: Sofa now claims to love him and the surgeons restore his lost looks. But as he makes love to Sofa one night, she suddenly changes into Nuria. Horrified, Csar smothers her to death with a pillow. Yet everyone else believes Nuria was indeed the woman everyone else calls Sofa, and he is imprisoned for her murder.

While he is confined to the prison, fragments of his past return to him as if in a dream. It is revealed that, shortly after falling asleep drunk on the street, Csar signed a contract with Life Extension, a company specializing in cryonics, to be cryogenically preserved and to experience extremely lucid and lifelike virtual reality dreams. Returning to their headquarters, under supervision by prison officers, he discovers they specialize in cryonics with a twist: "artificial perception" or the provision of a fantasy based on the past to clients who are reborn in the future. He committed suicide at home shortly after signing the contract and was placed in cryonic suspension. Duvernois, the L.E. representative who explains Csar's experiences to him while dreaming, reveals that the era is 150 years in the future and Csar's time from his awakening in the street onward has been a dream, spliced retroactively into his actual life and replacing his true memories. At the end of the film, Csar decides to wake and be resurrected by committing suicide. Convinced his life since the drunken night in the street has been a nightmarish vision created by Life Extension, he leaps from the roof of the company's high-rise headquarters, and the film ends, apparently ambiguously, on a black screen with a woman telling him to open his eyes.

Cast



* Eduardo Noriega as Csar, a confident and wealthy young man who has money and is successful with women

* Fele Martnez as Pelayo, Csar's best friend, whose personality is marked by his inferiority complex when it comes to meeting women

* Penlope Cruz as Sofa, Csar's love interest

* Najwa Nimri as Nuria, Csar's former lover, who still has feelings for him

* Tristn Ulloa as Camarero

* Chete Lera as Antonio, a psychologist who tries to help

* Grard Barray as Duvernois, a representative of the L.E. company

Reception



Critical reception

'Open Your Eyes' received mostly positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 85% approval rating based on reviews from 47 critics, with a weighted average score of 7.39 out of 10. The site's critical consensus states: "Director Alejandro Amenbar tackles some heady issues with finesse and clarity in 'Open Your Eyes', a gripping exploration of existentialism and the human spirit". James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film three and a half stars (out of four), writing that movies "of this intelligence, audacity, and complexity come along so rarely that it's mandatory to cry out their arrival" and that "those who see it will not quickly forget the experience".[http://preview.reelviews.net/movies/o/open_eyes.html 'Open Your Eyes' review], James Berardinelli, ReelViews. Rob Blackwelder of SplicedWire gave the film four stars (out of four), calling it "a jaw-dropping psychological thriller" that's "beautifully orchestrated".[http://www.splicedonline.com/99reviews/openeyes.html 'Open Your Eyes' review] , Rob Blackwelder, SplicedWire

Richard Scheib of 'The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review' also gave 'Open Your Eyes' four stars, writing that it is "quite a remarkable film".[http://www.moria.co.nz/sf/openyoureyes.htm 'Open Your Eyes' review], Richard Scheib, The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review Holly E. Ordway of DVD Active wrote "I dont give out perfect 10 ratings lightly, but 'Open Your Eyes' earns one by all accounts".[http://www.dvdactive.com/reviews/dvd/open-your-eyes.html 'Open Your Eyes' review], Holly E. Ordway, DVD Active However, Aaron Beierle of DVD Talk gave a more lukewarm review, writing that he "found most of 'Open Your Eyes' interesting" but remarked that "there's something about the picture that kept me from being completely involved".[http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/2596/open-your-eyes/ 'Open Your Eyes' review], Aaron Beierle, DVD Talk

In 2016, Alejandro Amenbar said in retrospective that 'Open Your Eyes' was his worst film, telling that it had been written by teenagers, who did not know anything about life.

Box office

In Spain, the film was the second highest-grossing Spanish film of the year behind 'Torrente, el brazo tonto de la ley' with a gross of $7.8 million. In the United States and Canada it grossed $370,720.. Retrieved 6 July 2016. Elsewhere it grossed $0.7 million.

Soundtrack



;Vol. #1

#"Glamour" - Amphetamine Discharge (6:03)

#"Risingson" - Massive Attack (5:29)

#"El detonador EMX-3" - Chucho (5:17)

#"How do" - Sneaker Pimps (5:04)

#"Sick of you" - Onion (4:28)

#"T-sebo" - Side Effects (5:44)

#"Flying away" - Smoke City (3:50)

#"Arrecife" - Los Coronas (3:11)

#"Yo mismo" - If (3:37)

#"Tremble (goes the night)" - The Walkabouts (5:02)

#"El detonador remix" Chucho / Side Effects (5:01)

;Vol. #2 (Instrumental)

#"Abre los ojos" (2:28)

#"Sofa" (1:12)

#"Soar es una mierda" (1:04)

#"La operacin" (1:33)

#"Dnde est Sofa?" (0:54)

#"El parque" (3:08)

#"Hipnosis" (2:20)

#"Qutate la careta" (2:56)

#"Eres mi mejor amigo" (2:41)

#"La nica explicacin" (2:05)

#"Quiero verte" (6:38)

#"Esa sonrisa" (0:53)

#"'Deja vu'" (1:51)

#"Excarcelacin" (4:28)

#"La vida" (1:46)

#"La azotea" (5:21)

#"Crditos finales" (3:31)

Source: .

Awards and nominations



|-

| align = "center" rowspan = "10" | 1999 || rowspan = "10" | 13th Goya Awards || colspan = "2" | Best Film || || rowspan = "10" |

|-

| Best Director || Alejandro Amenbar ||

|-

| Best Original Screenplay || Alejandro Amenbar y Mateo Gil ||

|-

| Best Actor || Eduardo Noriega ||

|-

| Best Editing || Mara Elena Sinz de Rozas ||

|-

| Best Art Direction || Wolfgang Burmann ||

|-

| Best Production Supervision || Emiliano Otegui ||

|-

| Best Makeup and Hairstyles || Colin Arthur, Paca Almenara, Sylvie Imbert ||

|-

| Best Sound || Daniel Goldstein, Patrick Ghislain, Ricardo Steinberg ||

|-

| Best Special Effects || Reyes Abades, Alberto Esteban, Aurelio Snchez ||

|}

American remake



Director Cameron Crowe's film 'Vanilla Sky' (2001) is a remake of 'Open Your Eyes'. It stars Tom Cruise in the lead role (renamed David Aames), Penlope Cruz reprising her role as Sofia, Cameron Diaz as the woman who disfigures David (renamed Julianna Gianni), Jason Lee as the friend (renamed Brian Shelby), and Kurt Russell as the psychiatrist (renamed Curtis McCabe). Transporting the action from Madrid to New York City, 'Vanilla Sky' follows its source material's plot very closely, but makes several changes to the ending.

See also



* Lucia

* 'Life Is a Dream' ('La vida es sueo')

* Lucid dream

* Simulated reality in fiction

* Twist ending

* 'Ubik'

* 'Vanilla Sky'

References




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