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Open Your Eyes (Abre Los Ojos)

César can't wake up. The rich Spanish playboy's alarm clock repeats its summons. "Abre los ojos ... Abre los ojos ... Abre los ojos" it urges in a woman's sultry whisper. So he hits the streets of his native Madrid only to find them deserted. Not a soul. "Abre los ojos," murmurs his undeterred alarm. "Abre los ojos ... ." Just a bad dream. "Stop leaving messages on the alarm," he snaps at last night's tousled lay. By the time César (Eduardo Noriega) is zipping through the crowded streets of Spain's largest metropolis, Alejandro Amenabar's sleek, stylish psychological thriller is coming on like a Latin lover -- fast and smooth. Equal parts Hitchcock, The Phantom of the Opera, and Alan J. Pakula's conspiracy potboiler The Parallax View, 1998's unrelenting Open Your Eyes is the perfect European sex flick: It never stops fucking with you -- not even after the climax. You see, today is César's birthday, occasion enough it seems to seduce the date of his best friend Pelayo (Fele Martinez), and when that date turns out to be Penelope Cruz, who can blame him? Even more luminous than her saintly turn in All About My Mother, Pedro Almodóvar regular Cruz (Live Flesh, The Hi-Lo Country) represents all the beauty and purity absent from César, and with her bright-eyed Barcelona Barbie-doll looks, she becomes his Madonna. When César finally finds himself straddled by Penelope Cruz, and she sits up in her birthday suit and bedroom smile, it's enough to make any man snap. Director Amenabar, obviously a genius, holds the gifted young actress in this pose long and lovingly, her ripe smile melting behind a glorious tassle of long brown hair. When she tells César she loves him, many male viewers will weep. Salma Hayek, Jennifer Lopez, and now soon-to-be Woman on Top, Penelope Cruz. Abre los ojos ...