‘Close your eyes’
Manager: Victor Erice
Artists: Manolo Solo, José Coronado, Ana Torrent
Year: 2023
Premiere: 29.09.2023
★★★★
The references used by Víctor Erice in his last film (Dean Martin’s song in ‘Río Bravo’, Josef von Sternberg’s cinema, quotes from Dreyer) may not be on the agenda of the new generation of viewers, but no one makes a movie just by thinking. from a kind of audience, i.e. HE manager He channeled both his own and current cinematic experience and perspective into a film that is a lucid and bitter reflection on the survival of images.. The story grew out of a search by a filmmaker, Erice’s alter ego, to find the actor who disappeared, leaving the movie they were both shooting unfinished. It’s as if Erice was searching for the images he couldn’t make out of “The South” or the frustrated adaptation of “The Haunting of Shanghai,” not those of Sternberg or Juan Marsé.
To be film Lyrical and deeply melancholy, ‘Close your eyes’ is also the active gesture of a director who refuses to give up cinema. In fact, during the long periods when he was not in commercial cinemas, he continued to shoot many films, albeit in different formats. And in her film, Ana Torrent reappears, and through her name and gaze, films, eras and moods are connected. Her character, the missing man’s daughter, says “I am Ana” twice, two shots and a fade to black, condensing a significant part of the author’s film legacy.