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TAKE
MY EYES
3/10
Te
doy mis ojos aka You Have My Eyes : Spain
2003 : Iciar BOLLAIN
Domestic violence
is, by any measure, a serious and important issue - so powerful, indeed,
that it demands the most careful, sensitive and intelligent treatment
if used as the subject-matter of a film. And this is precisely what writer-director
Bollain does not provide with her grindingly formulaic Take
My Eyes - a woefully by-the-numbers melodrama loaded with cheap, artificial
gravitas. In the crucial central role of battered-wife Pilar, Laia Marull
gives a lousy performance - a gratingly mannered caricature of meek self-effacement.
As her volatile
husband Antonio, meanwhile, Luis Tosar copes as best as he can with a
one-dimensional part - but even an actor of his great skills (he's rightly
regarded as pretty much the equal of Javier Bardem in their native Spain)
can't do much with such a thankless role. Antonio is a pigheaded, drink-swilling
macho-man whose dialogue mostly consists of monotone, paranoid rants.
He's clearly incorrigible, despite attending some group-therapy sessions
(which Bollain seems to conveniently forget about in the film's latter
stages). These sessions do, however, provide rare flashes of welcome interest
in the form of comic relief - as do the shenanigans of Pilar's relatives
when her sister Ana (Candela Pena) gets married to a nice-guy Scotsman
(Dave Mooney).
Like Tosar,
Almodovar graduate Pena deserves much better: if she'd switched roles
with Marull, Take My Eyes would undoubtedly have been much more
bearable - but it seems likely that only the removal of Bollain from the
project would have made it a success. As it is, Take My Eyes is
a regrettably missed opportunity - not least because so few Spanish releases
obtain distribution in the UK (especially compared with the endless stream
of so-so French product that infests our arthouses). There's one bright
spot on the horizon, however in the form of Pablo Berger's breezily unpretentious
Torremolinos
73, which - although it doesn't pretent to deal with any serious
social problem - showcases Pena, and current Spanish cinema, to much more
impressive effect.
7th November,
2004
[seen 24th September, 2003 : Kursaal, San Sebastian : press show : San
Sebastian Film Festival]
this review
written for Tribune magazine
click
here for original review from the 2003 San Sebastian Film Festival
by Neil
Young
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