One of the major cinematic events of the year was the Cannes premiere of the first film in three decades from Spanish director Víctor Erice (The Spirit of the Beehive, El Sur, The Quince Tree Sun). The nearly three-hour drama Cerrar los ojos (aka Close Your Eyes) follows a director living in retirement that returns to a mysterious past. Curiously still without U.S. distribution, hopefully the film will appear at some fall festivals but in the meantime, the first international trailer has arrived ahead of its mid-August release in France. While a French-subtitled trailer for a Spanish-language film may not be as edifying to most readers here, it’s great to see Erice back behind the camera and we’ll update if an English-subtitled version arrives.
David Katz said in his Cannes review, “Curious, self-referential, and rich, Close Your Eyes has had a difficult passageway into the world, with its Cannes world premiere dogged by reports of conflicts over its runtime, its non-competition placement, and Erice’s own in-person boycott of the screening. Its final form also is a scarcely believable one, singular and self-possessed even amidst all the latter-day auteur work that’s screened in recent days: although it’s studded with other media, such as an unfinished film of Garay’s and trashy Spanish primetime TV, the main bulk is a pokily shot mystery ‘procedural,’ told mainly in one-to-one dialogue scenes, shot in judicious singles with minimal coverage and muted lighting. But Erice is gradually able to accrete a rich character study of Garay and, yes, another meditation on the Grand Power of Cinema––not that we’re lacking in those at the moment––enriched by the fact that this theme, together with memory and longing, has long been the director’s modus operandi.”
See the trailer and poster below.
