Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 03/11/2008 Run time: 117 minutes Rating: R

Imagine if an actor's director like Eric Rohmer--whose films consist almost entirely of conversation between pairs or small groups of people--made a film that incorporated elements from movies like Dark City, eXistenZ, The Thirteenth Floor, The Truman Show, and Total Recall. The result might resemble Alejandro Amenabar's remarkable second feature, Open Your Eyes, which favors ideas over effects and offers twist upon twist with mind-warping agility. This film rewards multiple viewings, pushing the viewer toward one perception of reality, then switching to another until reality itself is called into question. Melodrama, love story, and psychological thriller combine with a dash of science fiction, forming a plot that is both disorienting and deceptively precise.

Set in Madrid, the story defies description, but this much can be revealed: young, handsome Cesar (Eduardo Noriega) is vain, rich, charming, and--following a botched suicide-murder scheme by a jilted lover--horribly disfigured. He'd fallen in love with Sofia (Penélope Cruz) but is now an embittered husk of his former self, stuck in a "psychiatric penitentiary" on a murder charge and hiding behind an expressionless mask. His reality has crumbled, but as the film's agenda is gradually revealed, we realize that there are other factors in play. Exposing that agenda would be a criminal offense against those who haven't seen the film; suffice it to say that Open Your Eyes takes you into the twilight zone and beyond, and does so cleverly enough to prompt Tom Cruise to produce and star in an English-language remake, Vanilla Sky. The 2001 remake, directed by Cameron Crowe, costars Cameron Diaz and Penélope Cruz, who reprises her original role. --Jeff Shannon

If you can follow subtitles along with movie, you'll like this one much more than vanilla sky. However, vanilla sky answered some questions for me or perhaps just that I knew what to expect.

Oh yes you sould really see this movie before you watch the "Tom Cruise" one. But I guess you've already saw the hollywood version of it. But if you can please watch this first!

This is a great movie I feel if you are fan of unorthodox ideas and stories.

I heard an interesting theory which is we can be reincarnated into any time period past or future or even live the same life over again to try to change something that we deeply regret.

This movie gets into some of those kinds of ideas.

I don't want to ruin it by saying too much more about the plot.

Jeff Marzano

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A wonderful, visionary film. Many reviews highlight this.

I just wanted to note that, contrary to rumors, I am not the basis of the Serge Duvernois/Man on the television character. Really, I am not!

At the tender age of twenty-five, Amenabar released the mind-bending "Eyes," later Americanized into the inferior "Vanilla Sky." A multilayered, nightmarish whodunit, the intense Noriega makes Cesar's psychic torture palpable, while Cruz personifies the ideal of feminine beauty--ephemeral, tantalizing, and just out of reach. This dark, boldly inventive film, accented with intriguing futuristic elements, keeps its audience engrossed and guessing until the very last frame.