Close Your Eyes

Date:
5th March 2025

Cert: 12

Duration: 2h 49min

The three main protagonists have in the film, Julio, Miguel and Anna have closed their eyes to the realities of loss, abandonment and grief and each is adrift in their own oasis of despair. Anna mourning the loss of a father who had been in absentia long before his disappearance. Miguel mourning the loss off a child and Julio lost to himself in a world of his imagining. we see these three characters desperately trying to make sense of their lives and finding only a an absence of joy and beauty.

The story moves inexorably toward a distillation of the existential crisis which Freud espoused infects all of us. A crisis at the core of which lies an instinct toward self anhelation. And so we see Julio make his escape from the encroachment of an aging body, and the dissolution of his painstakingly carved identity. No-longer the Casanova who could extricate himself from the vicissitudes of life he retreats behind the camera lens and lives vicariously through his character.

Miguel tormented both by the loss of a son and having to abandon his opus magnus due to the disappearance of Julio. He escapes to the seaside, where he ekes out a meager existence writing screen plays for others. Unreconciled with his losses he now seeks to resurrect the past and recover what had been surrendered.

Ana lives in the shadow of a past characterized by the abandonment of her father Julio and the irreconcilable grief of losing him for a second time with his disappearance. Her life a pictogram of a successful life at the epicenter of which lay an all consuming sadness and despair.

Their lives converge as Miguel sets out to unravel the mystery surrounding Julio’s disappearance and in the process he must at last reconcile with his losses. The film in which Julio had starred, is called the Farewell Glance and is the story of the search for a lost daughter. The Father of the girl in the film on finding her, warns her ‘ don’t let the sea swallow you’. These words speak from the screen to all of the characters who have themselves, drowned in a sea hopelessness and anguish. And they each must, if they are to recover any semblance of meaning, relinquish the expectation that life, and God owes them some penitent act.

Julio, Miguel and Ana are all inalienably bound by the film a Farewell Glance and they are themselves called to take a farewell glance at the past and reconcile with the unfolding of events both past and present.

There is a stark absence of joy within this film and I think that perhaps the director himself defines existence a series of repeating tragedies that punctuate life and that life itself is acerbic and characterized by suffering.

Launa Myrie

Audience Reactions

A: 09, B: 07, C: 07, D: 03, E: 0

A: A wonderful film. Beautiful photography. I will remember it for a long time. (A)
(A) Great film about film-making and life and everything! Not just showing off like Wim Wenders! (A)
Stupendous! (A)     A beautiful reflection on loss. Great cinematography (A)
What a long journey, but so worth it – I loved that the writer finished his story! Very different…(maybe a tad long)(A)

B: So, did he get his memory back??!! (B) Layers of complexity & it rained a lot (B)
Intriguing and beautifully filmed. (B) Kept the interest but no happy ending. (B)
Would have felt more involved if it hadn’t been so long. Needed editing in earlier part. Hard to get it early on but it was much more understandable as it went on. (B) An intriguing story, beautifully told. (B)

C: Fascinating concept. Excellent acting especially by the man who had lost his memory. (C)
Slow. Nicely shot. Liked the end… (C) A bit slow but moderately enjoyable. (C)
Pleasant but too protracted and with an annoying anti-climax. (C) Good performances but too long (C)
Interminable. Jeremy Corbyn was good. (C) Intriguing but a bit too slow (C)
Interesting, kept me guessing & interested. Enjoyed the Spanish language and setting A bit long! Slow-paced & quiet (C)

D: Tedious (D) Very slow but moving. (D) Could not engage with it. Not exactly boring but too cryptic. (D)