Close Your Eyes

Wednesday, September 18, 2024
9:30 PM / Broadway Theatre

Close Your Eyes / 2023/ Spain & Argentina/ Dir: Victor Erice / 169 Min/ Current Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

Set in contemporary Madrid, an aging filmmaker named Miguel Garay is called upon to recount his memories of working on his final and still unfinished film, “The Farewell Gaze.” During its production, the lead actor and Miguel’s close friend, Julio Arenas, disappeared without a trace, leaving in his wake a mystery that would haunt the lives of everyone associated with the film. Miguel never directed another project, instead living a quiet life as a writer by the coast. He remained reluctant to unravel the mystery surrounding Julio until approached by an investigative television program reviving the case decades later. With careful reflection, he reconnects with the film’s crew, former lovers, and Julio’s daughter, seeking closure for the disappearance and what it meant for all of their lives.

Over three decades after the release of his previous film, revered Spanish auteur Víctor Erice (The Spirit of the Beehive, El Sur, and Dream of Light) returns with a “poignant cinematic swan song” (The Hollywood Reporter). A reflective culmination of Erice’s career in film, Close Your Eyes is a haunting meditation on memory, absence, and the enduring resonance of the moving image.

“A slow-burn marvel which climaxes in a sequence of overwhelming profundity and mystery.” David Jenkins, Little White Lies

“A moving meditation on existence, memory, and cinema’s potential to preserve them both.”
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox

“A shimmery, nourishing culmination of ideas and ellipses in a career so elusive as to have taken on a mythic quality, to the point that his latest feels almost dreamed into being.”
Guy Lodge, Variety