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Open Your Eyes (1997, Sp.)
(aka Abre Los Ojos)
In director Alejandro Amenabar's confusing and baffling
film, a remake of Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958),
and remade in Hollywood with Penelope Cruz (again) and Tom Cruise
(real-life lovers at the time) as Vanilla Sky (2001), by director
Cameron Crowe:
- the main character: 25 year-old handsome, and attractive
playboy César (Eduardo Noriega), who related his 'unreliable'
story, in flashback; at first, he met and flirted with beautiful
brunette Sofia Cueto (Penelope Cruz), the girlfriend of his good
friend Pelayo (Fele Martínez); during a birthday party at
his place, Cesar's jealous, obsessive, abandoned black-haired lover
Nuria (Najwa Nimri) gate-crashed and came to his bedroom - hinting
that she felt jilted because she hadn't been invited to his party,
and that she knew of his flirtations with the brunette; she forced
kisses on him, causing him to leave and attend to his guests
- the next morning, Nuria picked Cesar up in her red
sports-car; while driving, she downed a napkin full of pills, then
said
"happiness" was being with him, although he admitted his
thoughts were elsewhere and he didn't want to have a heavy conversation
with her; she said she felt used by him only for sex, and that he didn't
really know her; Nuria asked him: "Tell me something. Do you believe
in God?"; then, Nuria deliberately smashed her car into a guard
rail, sending them down an embankment into a cement wall; she deliberately
killed herself and injured him as her passenger - he had a fractured
skull; after the accident, the suicidal Cesar had severe facial disfiguration,
and was forced to wear a prosthetic mask; he suffered from mental trauma
and delusions, and was looking for a way to resolve his life's predicament
- the sight of Cesar seen lying on the street, holding
a prosthetic face mask in his hand, and revealing his severe facial
disfigurement; a female was whispering and prodding him to wake up
with the words
"Open Your Eyes"
Lying on Street - The Facially-Disfigured Cesar
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Cesar With Sofia
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Cesar Making Love With Sofia
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- the scenes of Cesar's unsettling disjunctions and
dreamy wish fulfillments (mostly to get together with Sofia, or
to have a new face); in one striking highly-sensual scene (in his
'dream' (?) life), he made love to a nude, brown-haired Sofia -
she straddled him, then sat up and posed above Cesar
- Cesar's continual sessions with his psychiatrist Antonio
(Chete Lara) in a psychiatric penitentiary (prison cell) in Madrid,
talking about his recurring dreams; he had also been charged with
murder - in a deranged and insane state, he was accused of smothering
Nuria/Sofia with a pillow while making love to her
- through hypnosis with his psychiatrist, Cesar remembered
that around the time of his disfigurement, he had been pressured
to sign papers ("You won't regret it. Sign") for a contract
with an American cryogenics company called Life Extension (or L.E.);
in fact, it appeared that had contracted for L.E. to freeze his body
(after he committed suicide in despair over the accident), and provide
him with other after-life services; the cryonization company was
paid to give him "immortality" after death ("You
pay to live eternally") - in other words, a rebirth; he would
be given a future fantasy virtual paradisical life of "artificial
perceptions" (in Clause 14) or virtual reality dreams - based
upon his past experiences; however, there were technological glitches
in L.E.'s cryonics VR system, causing his nightmarish visions (there
was a "splice of 150 years" inserted between Cesar's "real
life" and "virtual life" - the splice was something
that he shouldn't have noticed because he was "dead and frozen," but
apparently Cesar did); his life was in fact a virtual reality dream
(spliced into his real memories) of what he imagined he had experienced
after the night of his birthday party and the devastating crash
- the final scene was set on the top of the 50-story
high-rise rooftop of the L.E. company; he was told by Serge Duvernois
(Gérard Barray), now revealed as a representative of L.E.
or Life Extension, that he had signed the papers with L.E. to put
him into a dream of how he wanted life to be, but because of his
traumatic recollections, he was living a "nightmare" life
("You invented your hell"); he believed
that the nightmarish visions he was experiencing were solely created
by L.E.
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His Final Meeting With Sofia on The Rooftop
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Suicidally Jumping From Roof to End His Nightmarish
Life and Trigger Rebirth
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- in the transcendental, stunning conclusion, Cesar
believed that he could live a better life ("You just have
to ask") in the future year of 2145, about 150 years into
the future (150 years could also be a few hours, a day, a week
- an indeterminate amount of time); Duvernois asked Cesar: "Do
you have any wish before you die?" Cesar closed his eyes,
and conjured up in his head his long-dead lover Sofia, breathtakingly
beautiful in an almost transparent white dress, and restored his
own face to normal; wordlessly, he embraced her; one last time
before 'killing' his current 'virtual' life, he resolved to "open
his eyes" to non-cryogenic healed life in the future - he
elected to wake up and be resurrected, now that plastic surgery
had advanced and might help him
- in his final moments, Cesar gave Sofia a farewell
kiss, and then jumped - hopefully to trigger his rebirth; an instant
before he hit the ground, the film cut to black, and a strange woman's
voice (a nurse?) in a soothing voice asked him to awaken:
"Tranquilo. Tranquilo. Abre los ojos..." ("Relax. Relax.
Open your eyes...").
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Cesar (Eduardo Noriega)
Cesar Flirting with Sofia Cueto (Penelope Cruz)
Jilted Nuria (Najwa Nimri)
Frozen Cyrogenically - Everything Was Only a Dream ?
Cesar's Black-Haired Lover Nuria (Najwa Nimri) - or was
it Sofia?
Murder of Sofia/Nuria: Smothered by Cesar
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