Close Your Eyes Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Close Your Eyes Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 1, 2025

Even diehard "discerning cineastes", or at least younger members of that elite group, may not be overly familiar with Victor Erice, since his filmography is very brief, and his two best remembered narrative features (and really his only purely narrative features as director aside from the film currently under discussion), The Spirit of the Beehive (still not available in Region A on Blu-ray as of the writing of this review) and El Sur, were released many decades ago and despite their renown at the time, may frankly have faded from memory for some in the interim. El Sur, the more recent of the pair, was released in 1983, and that was a full decade after The Spirit of the Beehive, so "quantity" is obviously not part of Erice's game plan with regard to cinematic output. A span of forty years between features, though, is really rather remarkable, and in a way that "absence" is echoed in the very plot of Close Your Eyes, in more ways than one. (Erice's Dream of Light was released in 1992, but kind of toes a line between traditional documentary and narrative elements.)

It's 1947 on the outskirts of Paris at an imposing mansion identified (in French) as The Sad King, where a Sephardic Jew named Levy (José María Pou) is attempting to enlist an anti-Franco Spaniard named Frache (José Coronado) to travel to Shanghai to somehow find Levy's estranged daughter. It turns out Levy is mortally ill, given only a few months to live, and he wants to stare into his daughter's eyes (and see her staring into his eyes) one more time before his demise. Except — this is, in fact, not the setup for Close Your Eyes, at least not in the conventional sense. It is instead a fragment of a supposedly unfinished circa 1990s film called The Farewell Gaze, a production which was suddenly halted and then scuttled when the actor playing Frache, Julio Arenas (José Coronado, not to state the obvious), mysteriously disappeared. What happened to him has remained a mystery, though suicide is one of several possible theories.

The story segues forward to 2012 to find the film's director, Miguel Garay (Manolo Solo), kind of comically signing contracts at a studio responsible for a television series very much like Unsolved Mysteries, which is going to devote an episode to Arenas' disappearance. What on its surface might be compared to a detective story turns out to be significantly more layered and nuanced, as Garay reconnects with people from his past and Erice starts to deconstruct any number of metaphysical ideas, with an emphasis on that "meta" part, since Erice is obviously attempting to draw parallels between the passing of time, memory, and the movie viewing experience, among other "weighty" subjects.

At nearly three hours, Close Your Eyes is unavoidably languid, but it rewards patient viewers with an unexpected array of emotions as things progress. The first half or so of the film is almost nihilistic in its world view, but despite what might seem to be a troubling "reveal" vis a vis Julio actually begins to, if not cheer things, at least offer a bit of breathing room and respite.

Close Your Eyes Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Close Your Eyes is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Film Movement with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.67:1. The first scenes are a "misdirect" of sorts, shot on 16mm, and ultimately revealed to be part of the unfinished The Farewell Gaze, (see screenshot 9) while the bulk of the "contemporary" scenes were digitally captured by Arri cameras and finished at 4K (these data points courtesy of the IMDb). This is a nicely detailed presentation with some especially beautiful framings at various coastal locations. There's a brooding quality to the imagery, meaning that things can be somewhat "gray" and mournful looking, at least in passing, though there are other moments, especially some where Miguel is reunited with a long ago love, that are suffused with a more summery yellow look. Detail levels are typically excellent throughout. There are a couple of very brief moments of banding (including on one of the production mastheads before the film starts).

Close Your Eyes Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Close Your Eyes features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 options in the original Spanish (with a few passing uses of English here and there). The surround track nicely opens up the glut of ambient environmental effects in the many outdoor scenes, as well as providing a more spacious accounting of the gorgeously elegiac score by Federico Jusid (the volume on the disc's main menu is kind of ridiculously high in its presentation of one of Jusid's lovely piano cues). Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Close Your Eyes Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

All of the supplements below, save for the film's Trailer, are basically interchangeable EPKs with brief interviews and behind the scenes footage. All are subtitled in English.

• Erice Returns to the Cinema (HD; 2:12)


• The Film (HD; 1:53)


• What is Close Your Eyes? (HD; 1:09)


• Erice on Film (HD; 1:21)


• Cinema as Memory (HD; 1:18)


• Close Your Eyes Trailer (HD; 2:00)

As with many Film Movement titles, there's also an About Film Movement option on the main menu which leads to a text pop up providing information about the label. The keepcase sleeve features an inner print photograph.

Close Your Eyes Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Close Your Eyes may frankly not have the sublime power of The Spirit of the Beehive, but for those willing to give themselves over to an intentionally hypnotic, dreamlike film, there's a lot to ingest and process here. Technical merits are solid and the brief supplements are enjoyable. Recommended.