TAKE MY EYES (Te doy mis ojos) Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
New Yorker Films
Grade: A-
Directed by: Iciar Bollain
Written by: Iciar Bollain, Alicia Luna
Cast: Laia Marull, Luis Tosar, Candela Pena, Rosa Maria Sarda, Kiti Manver
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 3/7/06
Opens: March 17, 2006 With all the worldwide attention that the American Oscars get, we might think that the U.S. is the only country to award exceptional films by handing out statuettes. But France has its Cesar awards, Italy its Donatellos, and Spain its Goyas. Perhaps only the American ceremony garners attention by the general public in well over a hundred countries, but when a film from Spain sweeps all the major Goya awards (the equivalent of our Oscars), discerning folks should sit up and take notice. Iciar Bollain’s “Take My Eyes” did just that–for film, director, original screenplay, leading and supporting actresses and leading and supporting actors. Oh yes, also for sound (solid, atmospheric chamber works). “Te doy mis ojos,” as the pic is known in its native country, is about a subject done to death by American soaps–wife-beating–but perhaps no other film has portrayed the phenonemon in such depth with a performance astonishing as that by Laia Marull as Pilar, a woman trying to save her nine-year-old marriage to a man who has injured her physically and emotionally. Projected with humor as well as pathos, “Take My Eyes” in no way glorifies Antonio (Luis Tosar), a sadly co-dependent man who takes his anger out on his emotionally fragile mate, but Bollain does show a failed marriage as anything but a black-and-white affair. Happily, Bollain is not writing for Hollywood. About the title: when in a moment of sexual passion Pilar tells her man to “take my legs, take my arms, take my breasts, take my eyes,” she is conveying to him her willing submission to his embrace. She is all too submissive to his demands in their day-to-day functioning, a woman without a paying career to elevate her self-worth, bringing up a lovely boy, Juan (Nicolas Fernandez Luna) who desperately wants to keep his family together. The story, which is co-written by the director and Alicia Luna, opens as a thriller, with Pilar’s packing her bags presumably after yet another attack on her person. Antonio, the object of her fear, is a man capable of tenderness as much as he is of violence, a guy able to bring his passionate wife to climax even while she is fully clothed. Though conflicted by what appears to be his love-hate connection, she decides that enough is enough and leaves with her son to stay with her sister, Ana (Candela Pena). Though prompted by her mother to return to a guy she believes simply “has his quirks,” she fends off the man’s loud appeals and a gift of earrings to begin a career as a museum guide in her native Toledo. Though the gig is unpaid, it gives her a feeling of self, separate from that of her husband. Against the strong advise of her sister, she returns to Antonio, who has been in all-male group therapy and promises to change. You can guess the rest. The tagline for the movie is “Donde dice hogar se lee infierno. Donde dice amor hay dolor.” (“Where it reads ‘home,’ read ‘hell’. Where it reads ‘love’ there is pain). While this is poetic enough it ignores one of the great pluses for the pic, which is that it avoids Hollywood-style melodrama. The wife does not get thrown over the balcony and, in fact, the physical harm that prompts her to leave her man is nothing compared to the humiliation she feels at one particular outburst of envy and rage. That the film conveys this through its performances and through the respect that the cast and crew must have for their audience tells you how it swept the Goyas from the table. Not Rated. 106 minutes 2006 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online | 
