“Long-awaited” is not exactly the term for Victor Erice's “Close Your Eyes,” a film that the Spanish master's dedicated admirers might have hoped for, but dared not hope for. Instead, Erice's first feature film in 31 years (and only his fourth overall) arrives like something between a desert oasis and a mirage: a tremulous, nourishing culmination of ideas and ellipses in a career so elusive that it has acquired a mythical quality, to the point that his latest seems almost like a dream. But “Close Your Eyes” proves to be a surprisingly simple and emotionally direct film once its out-of-time aura settles. A story in itself of disappearance and reemergence, and the potential of cinema to unite past and present as if decades were days, it is powerful and moving enough to reach newcomers to Erice's work, even as the fans pore over its self-reflective details.
Having premiered at Cannes (where its surprising out-of-competition placement prompted complaints from critics and an annoying absence from Erice himself), “Close Your Eyes” has since been well received on the festival circuit, although an American distributor has yet to take a step forward. It would be a shame to limit the theatrical prospects of a film that slowly builds toward a deeply moving testimony to the power of big-screen images to shape consciousness, as did Erice's immortal debut, "The Spirit of the Hive." ”, half a century ago. , with its story of a young woman's worldview altered and tormented by a dusty screening of “Frankenstein.” That the same wide-eyed girl, Ana Torrent, plays a crucial, more jaded role in “Close Your Eyes” is just a point of bittersweet reflection here.
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We open, somewhat unexpectedly, on a grand French estate in 1947, where an elderly refugee from Franco's Spain summons the compatriot he hired to locate his long-lost daughter in Shanghai. The atmosphere is one of richly faded glory, painted in shades of brandy velvet; However, just as we engage in this difficult situation, moving towards a bittersweet revelation, we move forward in time to 2012, and the tactile brocade texture of Valentín Álvarez's 16mm camera work gives way to a grayer digital softness . We're not the only ones left in limbo: what we've been watching turns out to be a single reel of an unfinished film, "The Farewell Look," filmed in 1990 by the celebrated director, author, and Erice's fictional analogue, Miguel Garay ( Manolo Soro).
The film was abandoned under spooky circumstances: its protagonist, Miguel's best friend Julio Arenas (José Coronado), disappeared mid-filming and was never found. Two decades later, Miguel, whose film career has remained dormant since then, is contacted by the producers of a creepy investigative television show who are reopening the mystery; Needing the money, he agrees to act as spokesperson. However, the invitation prompts the now reclusive artist to begin his own wandering and trailing investigation into his past. It's a languid journey through contemporary Madrid that includes visits to Miguel's former film editor, Max (Mario Pardo), now a celluloid archivist who lives among fragile towers of 35mm reels; the fado singer Marta (Helena Miquel), Miguel and Julio's former lover; and Ana (Torrent), Julio's now middle-aged daughter, who may work as a museum tour guide but is less inclined than Miguel to revisit her personal history.
These ramblings and musings fill most of the bleak, even pessimistic first half of this nearly three-hour film, in which Miguel's assessment of his failed relationships and increasingly tenuous artistic legacy is mapped onto a more elegy. widened by the evanescent impact of cinema. Miguel and Max lament the tangible qualities of the medium, but also the way it validated them as men and storytellers. Erice's urgent appreciation of cinema's ability to capture fleeting moments of light, youth and beauty is as pronounced here as it was in his last feature, 1992's "The Quince Tree Sun," which focused on increasingly frantic efforts of a painter to do the same on the canvas. .
Thirty years later, that celebration is overshadowed by concerns of impermanence, which loom over the declining director and his increasingly less-seen work. Some Erice acolytes may be disappointed by the monotony of the images in his latest work, at least relative to the brilliant quality of his previous work; Yet even that feels imbued with meaning, a concession to new but not necessarily improved forms.
But gradually, in a second half of surprising narrative developments and a more illuminated and expanded perspective, “Close Your Eyes” rewards the patience and faith of viewers, not only in the filmmaker but in the film itself, as the arc of the Miguel's life comes to seem less like a retreat from greatness than a cutback on essential pleasures. A wonderful passage home set in the coastal community of Almería where Miguel has settled, with a trusty dog and good-humored neighbors, it is full of the joys of companionship and conversation. A vigorous dinner singing Ricky Nelson and Dean Martin's "My Rifle, My Pony and Me," from Howard Hawks' "Rio Bravo," is particularly moving, a demonstration of how cinema can linger less obviously in our daily lives.
An ending of revived and renegotiated connections brings us full circle, with Miguel's film immaculately projected in a movie theater that languishes for a long time before a small but emotionally invested audience: his discoveries amidst the lost images belie the earlier claim of Max that "miracles haven't existed in movies since Dreyer died." In Erice's painful and consummate return, cinema is life, but there is also life beyond.
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