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Open Your Eyes

 Open Your Eyes
type
TVTItem
 Open Your Eyes
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Open Your Eyes
 Open Your Eyes
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OpenYourEyes
 Open Your Eyes
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Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_1'); })Open Your Eyes (Abre los Ojos) is a 1997 film from Spain directed by Alejandro Amenábar.César is a handsome, charming, very rich young man in 1997 Madrid. He lives a life of clubbing and bedding hot young ladies, his latest casual sex hookup being a woman named Nuria, who is starting to get too clingy for César's comfort.At his own party César meets Sofia (Penélope Cruz), a young aspiring actress. He is smitten; the playboy feels himself falling in love immediately. But his chance at love is tragically cut short. Nuria, who has been following him, offers him a ride as he leaves Sofia's apartment the very next morning. He unwisely accepts—and Nuria deliberately crashes the car into a concrete wall.Nuria is killed. César survives, but he suffers ghastly facial disfigurement, injuries that leave him bitter and filled with rage at the world. He tracks down Sofia, but she rejects him. Drunk and alone, he passes out on the street.Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_2'); })However, the next morning, Sofia finds him, still passed out on the sidewalk. She apologizes, and professes her love, and they kiss. The plastic surgeons who told him that his face was too badly destroyed for any reconstructive surgery now tell him they've made a breakthrough, and they restore his pretty face. César has his life back, and love with Sofia, but strange things start happening. He begins to have hallucinations suggesting that his face actually remains horribly scarred. A strange man starts appearing and insisting that César's life is a dreamworld. And somehow, his beloved Sofia turns into Nuria, who is dead...or is she?Got a Foreign Remake just four years later as Vanilla Sky, which starred Tom Cruise as the man who suffers the scarred face, Cameron Diaz as the jilted lover, Kurt Russell as The Shrink, and Penelope Cruz reprising her role in English.Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_3'); })
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2021-11-01T21:39:46Z
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2021-11-01T21:39:46Z
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 Open Your Eyes / int_127fc252
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Creator Cameo
 Open Your Eyes / int_127fc252
comment
Creator Cameo: Alejandro Amenábar is the third of the three young men who meet César in the nightclub restroom, and mock his "mask" before leaving.
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Rage Against the Reflection
 Open Your Eyes / int_1397e10d
comment
Rage Against the Reflection: César is staggering down the steps from Sofia's apartment after—maybe?—murdering her. He catches a look at himself in the mirror and his face is again scarred. He smashes the mirror.
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Title Drop
 Open Your Eyes / int_18d15922
comment
Title Drop: The title is heard three times. First, as the first line in the movie, after Nuria has recorded a custom alarm on César's alarm clock. Second, when Sofia wakes César up on the street after he passes out. Third, as the very last line of the movie, when César (probably) wakes up again, 150 years in the future, after coming out of his lucid dream.
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Abandoned Area
 Open Your Eyes / int_1bbb76bc
comment
Abandoned Area: The film opens with a spooky shot of César in downtown Madrid, finding what should be a neighborhood full of people to be completely abandoned. This is eventually revealed to be part of his dream world.
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Your Mind Makes It Real
 Open Your Eyes / int_234073a4
comment
Your Mind Makes It Real: The L.E. manager tells him that everything that's gone on has been César's desire, whether unconscious or not, and that he basically created a Self-Inflicted Hell. He even coldly says that Antonio is a figment of César's imagination. Antonio doesn't take it well, though tellingly he stops talking when César pays less attention to him.
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Ghost City
 Open Your Eyes / int_2dbc1855
comment
Ghost City: The opening scene finds César in Gran Via Square in Madrid, which should be crammed full of people, but is abandoned and empty. At the end a shocked Antonio comes back up to the roof and reports that everyone is gone around the building as well.
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Tomato in the Mirror
 Open Your Eyes / int_2f329e3c
comment
Tomato in the Mirror: Vanilla Sky had a dramatic moment in which Kurt Russell (The Shrink) insists that he is real, and that he has two daughters. The Tech Support character responds with the Armor-Piercing Question "What are their names?" In this film the moment is more subtle, with Antonio crumpling to the ground and sobbing "Where are my daughters?"
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So Beautiful, It's a Curse
 Open Your Eyes / int_3b9b21c9
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So Beautiful, It's a Curse: The male variant.
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Woman Scorned
 Open Your Eyes / int_4063acfd
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Woman Scorned: Nuria responds to the prospect of getting dumped by attempting to commit murder-suicide, failing with the "murder" part.
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 Open Your Eyes / int_4b1ca7d2
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Genre Roulette
 Open Your Eyes / int_4b1ca7d2
comment
Genre Roulette: Critics noted that the film swerves wildly about what genre it really is, til it finally lands on science fiction.
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Wham Line
 Open Your Eyes / int_4e7c4536
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Wham Line:
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Lotus-Eater Machine
 Open Your Eyes / int_5541da8c
comment
Lotus-Eater Machine: Ends with the revelation that César actually committed suicide early on and was cryogenically frozen and put into a state of lucid dreaming where he lives out his fantasy life, gets the girl and gets an operation which fixes his disfigurement... however, the dream turns into a nightmare which culminates in César accidentally killing Sofia. (Maybe.) At the end he jumps off a building in order to wake himself up despite being given the choice to have everything fixed so that the dream would be happy again.
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Central Theme
 Open Your Eyes / int_5ce7dbb9
comment
Central Theme: Mirrors and masks play a central role in the film.
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Through the Eyes of Madness
 Open Your Eyes / int_5d5cc3fd
comment
Through the Eyes of Madness: The ending explains that everything that has occurred after César passed out in the street has been a dream. In real life, at some time after that moment, he signed a contract with a company that preserves its clients' bodies after death and keeps their brain waves active in lifelike virtual reality dreams, and then committed suicide. The bizarre occurrences are explained as glitches in the program. In the end, César decides to wake up from the dream program.
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Self-Inflicted Hell
 Open Your Eyes / int_6040801a
comment
Self-Inflicted Hell: The VR avatar of the guy from Life Extension explains to César that he's created everything himself, and all the nightmarish events have been his own imagination. The Life Extension guy then tells César that he can have Sofia back, or any other girl that he wants. He does imagine Sofia and Pelayo materializing on the roof, but only so he can say goodbye to them before he jumps.
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Grievous Bottley Harm
 Open Your Eyes / int_67792344
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Grievous Bottley Harm: Sofia smashes a vase over César's head and he's back up on his feet moments later. Possibly justified since this is a dream world.
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The Reveal
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The Reveal: The mysterious "Ellie" is L.E., aka Life Extension.
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The Shrink
 Open Your Eyes / int_6d089995
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The Shrink: Antonio, the kindly shrink that treats César in prison.
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Driven to Suicide
 Open Your Eyes / int_6d332aea
comment
Driven to Suicide: Nuria, quite literally is driven to suicide. "Tell me... do you believe in God?" Cesar can't live with losing his face and Sofia.
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Vorpal Pillow
 Open Your Eyes / int_716cdf08
comment
Vorpal Pillow: César kills Nuria...or is it Sofia?...by smothering her with a pillow. In classic Vorpal Pillow style, she's dead in 30 seconds.
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 Open Your Eyes / int_80251be3
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How We Got Here
 Open Your Eyes / int_80251be3
comment
How We Got Here: Early in the film we see that César is being held in a cell. Soon after we find out he's in for murder. Antonio the shrink arrives and the story unspools as César telling Antonio how things came to this.
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 Open Your Eyes / int_8b442f50
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Did Not Get the Girl
 Open Your Eyes / int_8b442f50
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Did Not Get the Girl: Cesar never ended up with Sofia.
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 Open Your Eyes / int_8b68d9a7
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Stalker with a Crush
 Open Your Eyes / int_8b68d9a7
comment
Stalker with a Crush: Nuria, dear God. So much so she's Driven to Suicide, deciding If I Can't Have You…, she'll be Together in Death with César.
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 Open Your Eyes / int_9d12bbc1
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Foreshadowing
 Open Your Eyes / int_9d12bbc1
comment
Foreshadowing: The twist ending is foreshadowed in César's very first scene with Antonio, when he says "Everything else is a lie. All of this seems a lie, including you." A subtle one. In one session, Antonio makes an offhand comment about someone he knew suddenly got a wife and two daughters, and that was his Happy Ending. In scenes after that Antonio keeps mentioning how he has two daughters. The French guy giving interviews about cryonics appears on TV two different times, once shortly before César is injured and once shortly after. When César spots a third TV appearance by the French cryonics guy, much later in the film at the asylum, he unravels the truth. When César meets Sofia in the park again he says "Don't you ever feel like you've already lived a moment?" Sofia answers by saying "They say it's a glitch in your brain." This particular sequence is immediately revealed to be a dream but it foreshadows the rest of the movie.
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 Open Your Eyes / int_a1d70162
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I Just Shot Marvin in the Face
 Open Your Eyes / int_a1d70162
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I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Cesar accidentally shoots a security officer with a gun during the climax. The look on his face is, "Did I just do that?!"
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Rom Com Job
 Open Your Eyes / int_a7ec3027
comment
Rom Com Job: It certainly isn't a comedy, but still, the protagonist is a rich playboy and his love interest is an aspiring actress who works as a living statue in the park.
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 Open Your Eyes / int_b1e8c9b1
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Dream Emergency Exit
 Open Your Eyes / int_b1e8c9b1
comment
Dream Emergency Exit: The protagonist realizes at the end of the film that he's in a lucid dream, after giving his body to a program called "Life Extension". First, he calls out for "Tech Support" in which case most of the dream stops and a man enters his dream to explain the situation and his current options. The protagonist opts to return to real life, despite knowing that 150 years have passed since he entered the dream; he's then told to kill himself in the dream to wake up, so he throws him from the roof and is next shown opening his eyes in presumably the real world.
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Cuckoo Nest
 Open Your Eyes / int_b4322cd7
comment
Cuckoo Nest: César is told that he's living in a virtual reality machine and he has to kill himself to get out. In a subversion, he jumps off a building, and it's true.
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The Bro Code
 Open Your Eyes / int_c19596a0
comment
The Bro Code: César only met Sofia in the first place because Pelayo, his best friend, brought her to the party as his date. He says that he thinks Sofia is "the one" and is deeply hurt when César swoops in.
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Fun with Acronyms
 Open Your Eyes / int_c25c7890
comment
Fun with Acronyms: César is compelled to seek out someone named "Ellie". Turns out it's "L.E.", aka Life Extension.
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Big "NO!"
 Open Your Eyes / int_c2cedc1c
comment
Big "NO!": Cesar, when Nuria decides to accelerate her car and plunge down an embankment into a cement wall.
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No Doubt the Years Have Changed Me
 Open Your Eyes / int_d777b649
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No Doubt the Years Have Changed Me: It's not a matter of years. But when a scarred César finds Sofia in the park, he says "Have I changed that much? Because I can recognize you."
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Idle Rich
 Open Your Eyes / int_deea2fb5
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Idle Rich: César's father had a chain of hotels. It seems that César basically lives the life of a rich playboy and his "partners" run the hotel business.
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"Everyone Comes Back" Fantasy Party Ending
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"Everyone Comes Back" Fantasy Party Ending: It turns out César has been cryogenically frozen and is in a virtual reality simulation, so it's not surprising his best friend and girlfriend appear once again. Of course, they're just VR characters; since 150 years have passed they won't be around when César awakes from stasis.
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All Just a Dream
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All Just a Dream: Everything after César passes out in the street is actually a dream he had after being cryogenically frozen. He signed a contract with Life Extension and then killed himself, allowing himself to live in a virtual reality dream where his face is unmangled and Sofia loves him. The horrible visions he has been seeing are apparently glitches in the VR program.
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"Friends" Rent Control
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"Friends" Rent Control: Discussed. César wonders how Sofia can afford such a nice apartment and asks if her parents help her out. It turns out that Sofia works as a human statue in the park.
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Happy Ending
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A subtle one. In one session, Antonio makes an offhand comment about someone he knew suddenly got a wife and two daughters, and that was his Happy Ending. In scenes after that Antonio keeps mentioning how he has two daughters.
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Open Your Eyes

The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

 Open Your Eyes
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Cuckoo Nest / int_e30aa419
 Open Your Eyes
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Dream Emergency Exit / int_e30aa419
 Open Your Eyes
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"Everyone Comes Back" Fantasy Party Ending / int_e30aa419
 Open Your Eyes
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Films of 1995–1999 / int_e30aa419
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Ghost City / int_e30aa419
 Open Your Eyes
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Hallucinations / int_e30aa419
 Open Your Eyes
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Homage / int_e30aa419
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Psychological Thriller / int_e30aa419
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Self-Inflicted Hell / int_e30aa419