Close Your Eyes - 2023 - 6/10
AKA - Cerrar los Ojos

While working on “The Farewell Gaze”, the movie that was never finished, the lead actor simply disappeared.
Decades later, a popular “missing persons” show hires to old director to try and find the actor.
After all, there was never a corpse found. Conspiracy theorists have flourished.
The quest into forgotten paths pulls him and the viewer along.

Film is beautifully lensed, quietly acted, and the bookends are magical.
(One wishes the abandoned “Farewell Gaze” was available.)
There is leisurely paced, and there is plodding. This is agonizingly slow.
Sluggish, and overlong. The narrative is not that rich, nor are the characters.
Arthouse cinema – know thyself.