Julia's Eyes


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FILM4 FrightFest is the UK's premiere fantasy and horror film festival. The festival, now in its 12th year, attracts thousands of genre fans each August to the heart of London's West End and the prodigious Empire Cinema, for five packed days of premieres, previews, personal appearances, signings and surprises.

item7 JULIA'S EYES - ***** Alan Jones In Conversation with Guillem Morales here.

UK release date 20th May 2011.

A sight for sore eyes, director Guillem Morales’ multi-layered, beautifully crafted, ravishingly shot and stunningly eerie sensory journey is one of the best thrillers of the year. With the seal of approval from executive producer Guillermo del Toro (whose touch of class is evident throughout), LOS OJOS DE JULIA/JULIA’S EYES is an invitingly perverse and brilliantly sly post-modern take on the giallo form.

Crammed full of bravura Brian De Palma-esque set-pieces that transfix with an extraordinary visual impact, Morales (director of the moody THE UNCERTAIN GUEST) with co-scripter Oriol Paulo (whose 1998 short film title MCGUFFIN says a lot) creates a Hitch-cocktail of PEEPING TOM subtext, AFRAID OF THE DARK cleverness and WAIT UNTIL DARK chills. All stylishly wrapped up in a super-charged emotional rollercoaster ride with a devastating moving finale that, in common with the same production company’s THE ORPHANAGE, you will not have seen coming until desperately trying to hold back the tears through the end credits. Hard to describe the story without revealing too much information crucial to its final reel; suffice to say after her blind twin sister Sara supposedly commits suicide, Julia (another towering performance from ORPHANAGE lead Belen Rueda) starts investigating the fact she could have been murdered. Even as the same degenerative eye disease that afflicted Sara starts to affect Julia, she hears about her sister’s possible boyfriend. Or could this shadowy figure just be a stalker prone to preying on blind women? Then Julia’s devoted husband Isaac (Almodovar actor Lluis Homar) suddenly disappears and a creatively twisted game of Blind Woman’s Bluff truly begins. Starting out deceptively simply before piling on the seat-edged intensity, Morales’ has an engaging way with the most compelling of psychological themes. Love is blind, the blind leading the blind, turning a blind eye and blind alley are just some of the key phrases that keep on resonating throughout this creepy delve into the murky corners of a damaged psyche. Mainly it’s about how losing one’s sight causes things to snap into focus, become see-through, allowing a more clearly observant view on things that never registered before; witness the Greek chorus of naked blind women Julia silently stands amongst in a locker room when trying to unearth Sara’s secrets. It’s an audacious conceit that Morales pulls off superbly with Julia’s panic-stricken bouts of ever-darkening blurriness highlighting the terror and claustrophobia of her shrinking world where her only support is a paranoid deviant. Like Julia you will feel trapped and afraid as her peripheral vision fades, blackness invades and every place she once felt safe becomes an assault course. Once the explanation of what’s actually happening startlingly comes into gorgeously composed frame, Morales continues to shock and awe with daring plot twists and nervy suspense set-ups; one involves a body in a freezer, another a mother’s warped agenda, the most outré, an astonishing inversion of the climax from SUNSET BOULEVARD. JULIA’S EYES might deal with the tragic loss of our senses, loved ones and sanity, but it ends on such a wonderful note of uplift and celebration adding immeasurable satisfaction and resonance to the cryptogrammic tease that has preceded it.

Be eyewitness to a major Spanish talent in Guillem Morales because as Julia confronts her demons and her nemesis, the movie becomes like nothing you’ve ever seen: an absolute knockout.