April 29–May 6, 1999
movie shorts
Alejandro Amenábar's film is part psychological thriller, part virtual reality romance, part philosophical investigation. César (Eduardo Noriega) is young, sexually active, cocksure. When he drops one of his latest conquests (Najwa Nimri, looking glamorously butch) in order to take up with his best friend's girl (the more conventionally feminine Penélope Cruz), his easy-cruise world begins to come undone. Unable to tell what he's dreaming and what he's living, Cesar finds himself surviving a wreck (in which the angry driver Nimri is killed), but with hideous facial scars. At another point he wakes in a psychiatric prison, charged with murder. As he works through his past with a court-appointed shrink (Fele Martínez), Cesar must confront his own selfishness and willful blindness. The film slips effectively in and out of time frames and places (shot in Madrid, the images are both haunting and high-tech), keeping its effects low-key and its tone mysterious. The apparent resolution (recalling Total Recall) is less interesting than the very compelling questions raised, which have to do with identity and faith, memory and science, intimacy and fear.