|
Julia's Eyes
| Released |
20 May 2011 |
| Director |
Guillem Morales |
Starring
|
Belén Rueda, Lluís Homar, Pablo Derqui, Francesc Orella |
| Writer(s) |
Guillem Morales, Oriol Paulo |
Producer(s)
|
Guillermo del Toro, Mercedes Gamero, Joaquín Padró, Mar Targarona |
| Origin |
Spain |
| Running Time |
117 miutes |
| Genre |
Horror, thriller |
| Rating |
16 |
|
|
Blind fear.
Spanish director Guillem Morales provides us cinemagoers with some much needed atmospheric horror with his new movie Les ojos de Julia (Julia's Eyes), a film that creates fear with the lightest touch by showing us the dangers of what lies hidden in the shadows. Produced by the same man who brought us The Orphanage in 2007 and more recently Biutiful with Javier Bardem, elements common to Spanish horror are found aplenty; such as bleak settings, hints of the supernatural and hugely atmospheric build ups. Using blindness as a theme to move around and examine, Morales creates an unsettling movie by revealing very little, instead letting our imaginations run wild and do the work for him.
Belen Rueda, who also starred in The Orphanage, plays Julia, a woman who discovers her twin sister's body after a supposed suicide in her house, in the bleak and almost desolate setting of Northern Spain. Like her sister, she suffers from a degenerative eye condition, which caused her sister to go blind and will rapidly do the same to her if she doesn't manage to avoid stress. Too bad her sister's just died and she's being chased by a man in the shadows then I guess... The "man in the shadows" is a mystery, a very real threat or the effects of a paranoid mind, as doubt is cast on his existence throughout by some well meaning detectives and a loving husband (played here by a big star in Spanish cinema, Lluis Homar). Julia however is convinced of her theory, and sets about finding a man who she believes is responsible for her sister's untimely death.
Helped in no small way by a hugely atmospheric soundtrack by Fernando Velazquez, Morales likes to show us things that are slightly out of focus or almost engulfed in darkness, and at times we can see through Julia's eyes as the light begins to dim and the shadows encroach upon her line of vision. There's a strong element created thus of uncertainty and doubt, as the validity of Julia's theories are thrown into question, as her ability to deal with the stress she's under brings blindness ever closer. However with a skilful hand Morales uses the slightest touch to make us believe in the existence of a man who goes by unnoticed, and an ominous and unsettling air is created, as Rueda's increasing isolation and vulnerability further cements the terror of the unknown.
While the common and often disappointing elements of modern day horror are to be found here; such as a beautiful, scantily-clad heroine, lingering erotically charged shots and enough flashes of gore towards the end to keep torture-porn fans entertained, these are mostly compensated for by some truly unnerving shots and unsettling scenes, which are in parts beautifully shot and wonderfully imagined. One in particular is set in a locker room full of blind naked women- which quickly turns to menace when they sense an intruder in their midst, and begin encircling her like a pack of hungry wolves; who would have thought that blind people could be so scary?
Unfortunately, with such a wonderfully nerve-wracking and suspenseful build up as this, the climax it reaches begins to fall apart as the mystery is unshrouded, piece by piece, leaving us with a much more dulled sense of panic, as if someone has just switched the lights back on. The need to answer all the questions presented in the first hand of the movie, and an over emotional finale, distil the gnawing sense of uneasiness that was growing nicely, and it's hard not to think that this would have been a much more terrifying experience had it been satisfied to finish half an hour earlier, leaving some of these questions unanswered.
- Eadaoin Browne |
