Open Your Eyes 1997

César, Eduardo Noriega, is a handsome young man whose day begins with a disorienting voice commanding him to open his eyes. He drives through an eerily empty city and then wakes again to find a woman in his bed. The line between reality and fantasy blurs as he begs her not to leave messages on his alarm clock, a small and telling detail that hints at the fragility of his grasp on the present. What follows is a vertiginous narrative that keeps the viewer shifting between memory, illusion, and the creeping dread of what may be hiding behind the face he presents to the world.

At a birthday gathering that doubles as a social arena where desire and danger mingle, César catches the eye of Sofía, Penélope Cruz, a magnetic presence who becomes the focal point of his attention. He flirts with her during the evening, and though the moment seems light, it quickly grows complicated. Sofía is not just a passing crush; she is entangled with César’s best friend Pelayo, Fele Martínez, who accompanies her as a date. The party atmosphere, infused with flirtation and risk, foreshadows the troubling entanglements to come. When César takes Sofía home that night, their connection seems intimate but incomplete, and they do not sleep together. The next morning, however, the morning-after mood unsettles César: an ex-lover, Nuria, Najwa Nimri, appears with an offer of a ride and, quite perversely, of sex. The encounter drives the plot into a dangerous terrain where desire and danger fuse.

The tension escalates dramatically when Nuria orchestrates a car ride that ends in a crash, seemingly with the intention to kill both César and Sofía. César survives, but the accident leaves him horribly disfigured, his face altered beyond any possibility of cosmetic repair. The drastic change forces him to cover his face with a mask, and Sofía recoils from the sight of him. The transformation fractures their relationship, and Sofía withdraws emotionally, unable to bear the sight of César’s new visage. The disfigurement becomes a defining afterimage that haunts César and redefines his sense of self.

As César struggles to navigate this new reality, he experiences a cascade of disorienting episodes. One night, while intoxicated, he falls asleep on the street and awakens into a chaining of memories and deceptions: Sofía abruptly claims to love him, yet his appearance has changed again, as if reality itself were being rewritten. The surgeons heal his face, restoring the look that once made him desirable, and for a moment it seems that normal life might resume. But the dreamlike logic persists: during an intimate moment with Sofía, she abruptly shifts into Nuria. The revelation shatters César, who reacts with a desperate act of murder, smothering Sofía with a pillow. To everyone around them, the dead woman is Sofía, while César is blamed for Nuria’s murder, leaving him imprisoned and isolated within a system that refuses to see his truth.

Within the confines of his prison cell, fragments of his past begin to return in lucid, dreamlike spurts. It becomes clear that César’s life has already been complicated by a secret contract with Life Extension, a company specializing in cryonics. The agreement promises preservation and the chance to relive experiences through intensely realistic virtual dreams. Returning to Life Extension’s facility under the watchful eyes of prison guards, César learns that the company’s concept of “artificial perception” involves constructing a past-based fantasy for clients who are effectively reborn in a future world. The revelation reframes his entire life, suggesting that the memories he has been living are manufactured, spliced into his timeline, and substituting for the truth of his earlier days. The man who woke up in a street and who described his love for Sofía may not have been living his real life at all.

The narrative then pivots to a startling temporal jolt: the era César awakens into is not the present, but a future roughly 150 years ahead. The man who believed he was waking into his real life discovers that his experiences since the drunken night in the street are, in fact, a prearranged dream. The Life Extension representative, Duvernois, Gérard Barray, explains that César’s memories have been retroactively inserted to create a seamless but illusory identity. The future world is meticulously engineered, and César’s yearning for authentic connection—his longing to wake up to a life that makes sense—turns into a question about the value and reliability of memory itself. The dream is not a mere flashback but a deliberate reconstruction of his existence.

In this new frame, César confronted with the possibility that his entire lifetime since the night on the street has been a manufactured experience. The question becomes whether waking up to “reality” means embracing a painful but true past, or continuing to live within a carefully crafted illusion. The film builds toward a stark, audacious finale: César chooses to end the dream by choosing to die, leaping from the roof of Life Extension’s sleek headquarters in a final, fatal act intended to awaken him to a different, possibly more genuine reality. The screen cuts to black, and a voice—soft and intimate—tells him to open his eyes, leaving the ending deliberately ambiguous and open to interpretation about the nature of consciousness, memory, and the human need for authentic experience.

Throughout this hypnotic, noir-tinged journey, the performances anchor the shifting terrains of identity and perception. The film dives into questions about how beauty, love, and trauma can distort memory and how technological interventions might blur the line between recollection and fabrication. The romance between César and Sofía remains a central emotional thread, even as Nuria’s appearance, Pelayo’s presence, and the unseen hands of corporate power complicate the ethical landscape of memory and autonomy. The script’s careful deconstruction of time, memory, and desire invites viewers to interrogate not only what they remember, but how they remember it, and what they would be willing to sacrifice to reclaim a life that feels truly their own.

Key performances thread through the narrative with a quiet intensity: César’s journey from confident charm to disfigured vulnerability, Sofía’s magnetism and evasive vulnerability, Nuria’s dangerous allure, Pelayo’s steadfast presence, and Dr. Antonio’s measured, professional veneer as the psychiatrist who becomes a window into César’s fractured psyche. The revelation of Life Extension’s true project reframes the entire experience, casting doubt on the very nature of reality and memory and introducing a provocative meditation on whether a dream or a memory, once implanted, can ever be disentangled from the self.

If you’re drawn to films that blend visual spectacle with philosophical questions about memory, identity, and the ethics of technology, this story offers a bold, immersive experience. The ending’s deliberate ambiguity invites reflection and discussion, encouraging viewers to consider what it means to wake up, and what it means to live a life that may not be real, but still feels achingly personal and true.