Miranda Otto in Emma's War (1987)

Close My Eyes

1991

Somebody reminded me about this movie a few days ago, so I decided to take another look at it.

Close My Eyes is about forbidden love. A brother and sister (Clive Owen and Saskia Reeves) finally allow a long-dormant, unspoken attraction to erupt into lust. This explosive situation is exacerbated by the fact that they wait until the sister is married to consummate their lust, and the husband has caught her in some lies about her absences. Before the consummation of the incest, the brother and the husband (Alan Rickman) had bonded over some common interests, and their friendship had become close enough that the husband eventually confided his suspicions to the brother, at first unaware that he was talking to the man who had cuckolded him.

SPOILER:

The husband finally puts the pieces together and figures out what's going on, but instead of getting angry, he just lets them know that he knows, understands, and forgives them. At that point the incest has run its course for the sister, but not for the brother, who has turned the affair into a full-blown obsession, so the redefined relationship among the three of them is utterly uncomfortable for everyone. The film ends with their awkwardness. They take a brisk autumn walk together. The husband and wife walk together, not quite in sync, while the brother trails behind them, within earshot, but not really part of the conversation. It's the kind of scene that can make audience members shift uncomfortably in their chairs and look away in embarrassment.

END SPOILER

I guess the film is supposed to excel as a character study, but that's a difficult position to support when the audience is kept totally in the dark about the characters' motivations. There are characters, but no study.

The script fails to explain why the following occurred:

1) The sister claimed she was happy with her husband just before diving into her brother's dick. Perhaps she had some reasonable motivation, but the audience is never let in on it.

2) The brother suddenly decided to change suddenly from from his career as a corporate heavy hitter into a more socially conscious type. He says he has done so, but we see no reason for it.

3) The brother's boss hired him to work in the socially conscious job, at a small fraction of his usual salary. He had a bad interview. He was outrageously overqualified. The two men seemed to hate one another. Then we saw him working!

4) In another scene the brother and sister, lying in a country lane, are almost run over by a truck. The truck driver never tries to swerve or slow down to avoid them. He just honks the horn and barrels forward, as if he were driving a train and there was nothing else he could do. What tha ...?

The script also makes all the symbols and allegories extremely obvious, so obvious that the characters more or less explain them in dialogue. For example, two men sit on a train together, talking while deploring the shoddy construction along the route, and the conversation goes something like this:

The brother's boss: "I say, it's all sort of a metaphor for the failings of the Thatcher administration, isn't it, old chap?"

The brother:  "Ah, yes, old man, as well as the failings of my own incestuous life, and your case of AIDS. In all cases a price is paid for a lack of restraint, don't you know?"

Close My Eyes doesn't try to hide the fact that it is arthouse film which wanders far from the beaten track with scenes you'd never see in a box office smash. In addition to the awkward ending and the explicit incestuous sex, we also listen to the husband and brother discussing Proust, and watch as the brother and his boss use the latter's AIDS to make slimy developers uncomfortable. If it were an American movie, it would include some variation of "gay cowboys eating pudding" (Cartman's characterization of all American indie movies), and I would label it "made for Sundance."

But it's not just arthouse in general. It's 1991 British arthouse. Man, 1991 was a long time ago. It may seem fairly recent, but take into consideration that a 13-year-old boy who watched this when it came out is 40 now, and he has probably aged better than this film. The film seems downright quaint, filled not just with the usual old-time British quaintness, but with a complete sense that the whole story belongs to a lost time and place, possibly in another universe. It's filled with references to how the modern developments of the Thatcher era were destroying the traditional appeal of London's classic architecture, and ... well ... I guess I had forgotten how obsessed everyone was with AIDS at the time.

The film does have plusses. Unlike typical arthouse films, the production values are solid. The cinematography is first-rate, the musical score is evocative, and the melodrama is elevated by a tremendous cast of seasoned professional actors, but none of those elements are enough to compensate for the questionable character motivations and the other weaknesses of the lifeless script in which the characters blather on and on about subjects unrelated to the main story, but tell us nothing about what is inside of them.

Of course, there is plenty of nudity, Clive Owen's dick makes a few appearances in the process of being offered to Saskia Reeves and Helen Fitzgerald, who both show the full monty.

Saskia Reeves



Helen Fitzgerald

Kirsten Dunst

Jennifer Garner

Avril Lavigne

Demi Lovato

Annalynne McCord

Minnie Driver

Paris Jackson

Rachel Nichols