He has only signed three feature films in his 60-year career. Three masterpieces. Víctor Erice (Carranza, 1940) is the Salinger of European cinema, a director oblivious to fashion and the industry, reluctant to give interviews, which he had been doing since 1992, when he released ‘El sol del quince’, removed from the commercial exhibition circuits . Since then, the author of ‘El espíritu de la colmena’ and ‘El Sur’ had only shot short films or short pieces for collective films. He had changed movie theaters for museums such as the Bilbao Fine Arts, where in November 2019 he signed the video installation ‘Harria eta zerua. Stone and sky’, inspired by a stela by Oteiza on the top of Mount Agiña, in Lesaka (Navarra).
Erice surprised the world last year by shooting a feature film, ‘Close Your Eyes’, which will premiere at the next Cannes Film Festival, which starts on May 16. The film will not compete for the Palme d’Or as it is scheduled in the non-competitive Cannes Première section, the same one that last year hosted the premiere of ‘As bestas’ before starting its successful awards and box office career. The Biscayan director thus returns in style, at the most prestigious film festival in the world, which in 1992 brought him the Special Jury Award and the Fipresci Award from international critics for ‘El sol del quince’, his particular approach to the work of painter Antonio Lopez.
Little is known about ‘Close your eyes’, a film that will hit theaters this year from the distributor Avalon. Manolo Solo and José Coronado lead a cast that is completed by María León, Mario Pardo, Soledad Villamil, Petra Martínez and José María Pou. Erice has also recruited actress Ana Torrent, whom he introduced to the movies when she was a seven-year-old girl in the magical ‘The Spirit of the Beehive’. The script is signed by Erice himself and Michel Gaztambide, a regular collaborator of Enrique Urbizu and winner of a Goya for ‘There will be no peace for the wicked’.
Identity and memory, themes dear to the director, form the backbone of this story of a disappearance, that of a famous Spanish actor, Julio Arenas, who vanishes during the filming of a film. Although his body is never found, the police conclude that he has suffered an accident at the edge of the sea. Many years later, this kind of mystery returns to the present as a result of a television program that tries to evoke the figure of the actor, offering as a preview images of the last scenes in which he participated, shot by what was his close friend, the director of the film The beginning and the end of an unfinished film. Granada, Almería, Asturias and Madrid have been the scenes of this Spanish-Argentine co-production, in which the director’s own production company, Nautilus Films, participates.
Indiana Jones and Scorsese
At the moment, ‘Cerrar los ojos’ is the only Spanish feature film present at Cannes, which will also premiere ‘Strange way of life’, the medium-length film that Pedro Almodóvar shot in the Tabernas desert in Almeria, the setting for spaghetti westerns, and that unites Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal in a cowboy film starring two gunmen who meet again after twenty-five years.
Cannes will pay tribute to Carlos Saura, Thierry Frémaux, general delegate of the contest, has advanced, and among its most anticipated premieres will be the latest by Martin Scorsese, ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert de Niro, and the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones saga, with Harrison Ford wielding the mythical archaeologist’s whip at the age of 80.
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