‘Close Your Eyes’ (2023)
Hard to believe that Spanish director Victor Erice hasn’t made a movie in nearly 30 years. Most renowned for his critically acclaimed “The Spirit of the Beehive” (1973), a village drama built around the screening of the movie “Frankenstein,” Erice’s last feature was the documentary “Dream of Light” (1992) about sunlight-inspired artist Antonio Lopez. To be fair, Erice has kept busy with shorts and anthology collaborations. At a spry 84, his latest, like “Beehive,” centers on a film, in this case an unfinished film. “Close Your Eyes” opens in Spain after its civil war and World War II as an elderly, well-off patriarch implores a younger man to go to Shanghai to search for his now teenage daughter. The how, what and why, are important, but not central to the film, as we jump into the near-now and learn that the scene we just drank in was from that unfinished film, “The Farewell Gaze,” directed by Miguel Solo (Manolo Solo), a weary-eyed lion who hasn’t made a movie in decades and now ekes out a living as a translator. “The Farewell Gaze” was never completed because the the actor who plays the envoy, Julio (José Coronado), disappeared mysteriously. A Spanish television series called “Unresolved Cases” gets on the case and ferrets out Miguel for a fee. There are multiple theories as to what befell Julio. Possibilities range from a cliff fall – suicidal or not – to an illicit affair with a strongman’s wife that was discovered. The true fate, or as close to the truth as can be, comes late in the film, but just as “Close Your Eyes” is not about the making of “Farewell,” it’s not about the fate of Julio: It’s about the journey of a filmmaker late in winter. To say that “Close Your Eyes” is reflective of Erice’s own cinematic arc would be both true and false, but it is an oblique, hypnotic sojourn into the emotional darkness of a filmmaker’s heart.
At The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Harvard Square, Cambridge.
A stronger
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