This film shows us a young man César (Eduardo Noriega). César lives in a Spanish city, he is rich (he has his own car) and handsome. He leads a life what you can expect from a rich youngster: girls, parties. So at the beginning of the film he organizes a party where he invites all his friends. On this party he meets a young girl of his own age Sofía (Penélope Cruz). César is enchanted with the girl but the trouble is that he is pursued by his former lover Nuria. So he flirts with Sofía partly from admiration, partly to avoid Nuria. Another problem is that Sofía is a new girlfriend of his best friend Pelayo but César is not really concerned with that.

Anyway César and Sofía soon become friends and he sees her home. Contrary to the expectations nothing happens and César leaves. There he is caught by Nuria who persuades him to give him a ride. The ride ends tragically: Nuria is dead and César's face is distorted. Nevertheless he somehow manages to live on. He finds Sofía and it happens that she loves him. Then all of a sudden the surgeons find way to fix his face and do it.

These are all flashbacks, in fact César is in a penitentiary for the murder that he does not remember to have committed. He is having sessions with a friendly psychologist Antonio who gradually persuades César to tell him the story of his life. The episodes change from the present to César's past experiences.

But then César in the course of his narration notices that some strange things were happening. For example how was it possible that he was loved by Sofía and the doctors were able to fix his face which they could not before. The thing was complicated by some other episodes that César didn't remember but that had definitely happened. Antonio even tried to use hypnosis but it only proved that César memories were too deep into unconsciousness.

Nevertheless César himself is troubled with those memories that are so dim that he can't remember. It takes some time when the spark of his memory sparkled and he rushed to the only place where the answers to his questions could be found. And this is where the film is really becomes weird. Reality mixes with dreams so it's impossible to define one from the other even when the film ends.

So this is a brilliant example of Spanish surrealism. Mixing dream and reality seems to be one of its favourite methods. But if with Buñuel you can tell which is which in this film you can't. The realistic and surrealistic layers intentionally blended. Not without some questions of course about their nature. The final episodes are suspiciously close to goofs.

Nevertheless the movie is good. It's interesting for the theme and its interpretation. The director's work is brilliant. I can't say that the film is exceptional or stylistically appealing but it catches your imagination. It might be a little bit old for today, some aspects should be treated differently. But I think you'll enjoy it.

Note. The Hollywood remake of this film Vanilla Sky missed the point. The characters in the Sky are shallow and unrealistic, or better to say, Americans. Cruise doesn't change his expression once: this smirk of his does not really suit the situation. Even his face after the accident is not much different from his normal face. Other actors are pathetic too. There is no chemistry between Cruise's character and the psychiatrist, between Cruise and Cruz. The scene in the car of vital importance they turned into a banal lovers' quarrel. And most important, they failed completely to reproduce the national Latino flavour. If in Spanish movie there stayed ambiguity, some obscure moments, in American version everything is chewed thoroughly and explained. Pathetic experience. If you make an American movie, better stick to Americal reality.

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