When we think of Spanish cinema, the names of Pedro Almodóvar, Carlos Saura, Alex de la Iglesia or Rodrigo Sorogoyen can immediately come to mind. The too rare Victor Erice does not arrive at the head of the pack and yet the octogenarian director who returns with Close eyes, a film discovered in a special screening this year at Cannes, has everything a very big one has to offer. We think of Terrence Malick in front of his brilliant but parsimonious filmography: we only owe him four feature films in half a century.
The Spirit of the Hive (1973), his first film, immediately placed him at the center of international cinephilia. He shared the trauma of a little girl terrorized by a horror film (the Frankenstein of James Whale) in Franco’s Spain. The cinema is also at the center of Close eyesa three-hour fresco where a filmmaker is looking for an actor friend who has been missing for several decades.
At the cinema but not also at the museum
“My impression is that, beyond the details of its argument, the fiction that the film will offer the viewer revolves around two intimately linked subjects: identity and memory,” explains Victor Eric in a note of intent. Like Terrence Malick, this discreet man refuses interviews believing that everything he has to say is in his films. South (1983), The Dream of Light (1992) and The Red Death (2006) complete his demanding work which evokes just as much Michelangelo Antonioni than Abbas Kiarostami.
He has also dedicated an installation to the latter, Kiarostami/Erice: Correspondences. A museum activity that he continued in collaboration with the painter Antonio López García for Clamor of the world, silence of painting, presented in Barcelona, Paris and Melbourne. In 2002, his friend Wim Wenders also called on him to direct a segment of an anthology of short films called Ten Minute Older. He was also a member of the Cannes jury chaired by Tim Burton which rewarded Apichatpong Weerasethakul for Uncle Boonmee in 2010.
But not only cinema esthete, Victor Erice has always enjoyed playing with time and space. Close eyes is a good way to learn about the sensitive work of this fascinating director who has been working for years on his filmed memoirs that we hope to discover one day.