Festival de Cannes
MOVIE REVIEW
Close Your Eyes (2023)
Victor Erice made a stone classic of Spanish cinema with “The Spirit of the Beehive” back in 1973 but in the intervening decades has made only one other feature film and one documentary, until now. After a gap of 31 years “Close Your Eyes” delighted the Cannes Film Festival with the demonstration of a master at work, telling a sad and complicated story with patience and respect, as well as plenty of nuns. The trouble is that this movie has so clearly been fretted and fussed over that it has lost the freshness and spontaneity the best cinema hopes to capture. This sense of being over-rehearsed is perhaps understandable, but unfortunate, as it prevents this good movie from being a truly great one.