CLOSE YOUR EYES (CERRAR LOS OJOS) Luminaries

Spanish auteur Víctor Erice returns to cinema after a three-decade-long absence with this hauntingly personal, discursive yet simmering reflection on memory, art and the passage of time. Set years after his lead actor and best friend, Julio, disappears suddenly from a film shoot, filmmaker Miguel Garay (Manolo Solo) is approached by a TV show profiling this unsolved mystery. This sets in motion a series of encounters from Miguel’s past, including a meeting with Julio’s abandoned daughter (played by THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE’s child lead – now seasoned actor – Ana Torrent, reuniting with Erice after a half-century). Leisurely but deliberately paced, CLOSE YOUR EYES folds and unfolds its mystery with a potent crescendo, confronting dichotomies of past and present, of text and metatext, of celluloid and digital, of history and modernity. In its culmination, Erice reveals an act of cinematic awakening that curiously reflects on his own extended absence and revered identity in cinema. –Anna Li