Ojos: Window to the Soul

"Tranquilo, tranquilo. Abre los ojos" (Relax, relax. Open your eyes.) Cesar hears a voice telling him this after jumping off a 50 story building. But I wouldn't want to spoil the ending for you.

If this sounds unbelievable, it is. Imagine a combination of Back to the Future, The Truman Show and Phantom of the Opera, set in Spain and you'll have some idea of the complex and quick moving Open Your Eyes (Abre Los Ojos). The movie opens with Cesar, a millionaire playboy played by Eduardo Noriega, finding relief from a seductress Nuria by meeting the beautiful girl next door type Sofia (played by Penelope Cruz). Cesar spends the night at Sofia's apartment in what seems to be the match made in heaven, but as he walks to his car the next morning, he is intercepted by satanic Nuria, wearing a red dress and driving a red car to take Cesar on a journey to Hell.

Nuria crashes into a stone wall, killing herself and maiming Cesar. Lucky to be alive, he has lost his looks and his face is hideously disfigured. What was a straight-forward storyline before the accident now becomes hopelessly entangled, as Cesar's dreams, nightmares and fantasies are showed as if they were real. Unable to cope with his face, he tries wearing a mask and calls himself the "Phantom of the Opera."

What Cesar ultimately uncovers is that he was cryogenically frozen after his death by the nefarious firm Life Extension and has been "reincarnated" in a dream world in the year 2145. Life Extension selected the night that Cesar was at the bar as the one in which to splice his real and fantasy life.

Open Your Eyes is an entertaining analysis of the blurry line between reality and fantasy, dreams and nightmare, and the powers of the human mind. Cesar has several experience of deja vu, some that are actually happening for the first time after happening in a dream, and some that he recalls from real life while in the dream.