‘Close Your Eyes’ Review: Victor Erice Returns From a 30-Year Absence With an Aching Ode to Film, Time and Memory
variety.comGuy Lodge Film Critic “Long-awaited” isn’t quite the term for Victor Erice’s “Close Your Eyes,” a film that dedicated admirers of the Spanish master may have hoped for, but didn’t dare expect.
Instead, Erice’s first feature in 31 years — and only his fourth overall — arrives as something between a desert oasis and a mirage: 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.
But “Close Your Eyes” proves a disarmingly simple, emotionally direct film once its out-of-time aura settles. A story itself of disappearance and reemergence, and the potential of cinema to bridge past and present as if decades were days, it’s potent and poignant enough to reach newcomers to Erice’s work, even as fans pore over its self-reflexive details.
Having premiered at Cannes (where its surprising out-of-competition slot prompted grumbles from critics, and a piqued no-show from Erice himself), “Close Your Eyes” has since been warmly embraced on the festival circuit, though a U.S.
Read more on variety.com