Open Your Eyes | |
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Spanish release poster
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Directed by | Alejandro Amenábar |
Produced by | Fernando Bovaira José Luis Cuerda |
Written by | Alejandro Amenábar Mateo Gil |
Starring |
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Music by | Alejandro Amenábar Mariano Marín |
Production
company |
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Distributed by | Live Entertainment |
Release date
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Running time
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117 minutes |
Country | Spain France Italy |
Language | Spanish |
Budget | ESP 370 million |
Box office | $370,720 |
Abre los ojos (English: Open Your Eyes) is a 1997 Spanish film co-written, co-scored and directed by Alejandro Amenábar and co-written by Mateo Gil. It stars Eduardo Noriega, Penélope Cruz, Fele Martínez and Najwa Nimri. In 2002, Open Your Eyes was ranked No. 84 in the Top 100 Sci-Fi List by the Online Film Critics Society. The movie's intersecting planes of dream and reality have prompted some critics to suggest comparisons to Calderón's play Life Is a Dream (Spanish: La vida es sueño, 1635).
An American remake entitled Vanilla Sky, directed by Cameron Crowe, was released in 2001, with Penélope Cruz reprising her role.
A young, handsome man wakes up to a female voice that is telling him to open his eyes. He drives to an empty city. He wakes up again, this time to a woman in his bed. He tells her not to leave messages on his alarm.
From a prison cell in Madrid, the 25-year-old man, César (Eduardo Noriega), tells his story to psychiatrist Antonio (Chete Lera) while wearing a prosthetic mask. Flashbacks reveal the following events: good-looking César is attractive to women. At his birthday party, he flirts with Sofía (Penélope Cruz), a classmate of his best friend, Pelayo (Fele Martínez). Later on, he takes her home and stays the night, although they do not sleep together. The next morning, César's obsessive ex-lover Nuria (Najwa Nimri) pulls up outside Sofía's flat, offering him a ride and sex. On the way to her home, however, she crashes the car with the intent to kill them both. César is horribly disfigured, beyond the help of cosmetic surgery, so he decides to wear a mask to conceal his face. Sofía cannot bear to see him and tries to keep the distance.