On the surface, there’s very little about either Open Your Eyes or Vanilla Sky that screams Erotic Thriller. Both Alejandro Amenábar’s 1997 Spanish original and Cameron Crowe’s 2001 American remake are frequently classified as psychological thrillers, or even dramas, due to their interest in exploring the downward spiral of the main character.
And yet, upon closer examination, both films owe a heavy debt to the tropes of the Erotic Thriller.
As we’ve previously explored in this editorial series, Erotic Thrillers embody the characteristics of Film Noir, albeit with a more contemporary perspective when it comes to sex and violence. There’s often a healthy dose of voyeurism and fetishism, typically embodied in doubles of characters (usually women). And, naturally, sex and death become intertwined as the desires of characters tend to result in dangerous consequences.
Nearly all of these elements are present in Open Your Eyes and Vanilla Sky. Spoilers follow…
In Amenábar’s feature directorial debut, Eduardo Noriega stars as César, a wealthy lothario who leads a seemingly charmed life (Tom Cruise plays David in the remake). Both men live in a giant apartment, César in Madrid/David in New York, courtesy of inherited wealth from his deceased father.
Our lead constantly uses his status and good looks to bed women, including possessive Nuria (Najwa Nimri) / Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz). And while César/David tells Nuria/Julie that he has no interest in commitment, his perspective on romance changes when his best friend Pelayo (Fele Martinez) / Brian (Jason Lee) brings a new girl, Sofía (Penélope Cruz in both films), to César/David’s birthday party.
Despite knowing full well that his best friend is sexually interested in Sofía, César/David pursues her anyways. After a whirlwind night of flirtatious banter (but no sex), the playboy is picked up by Nuria/Julie when she insists on giving him a ride.
At this point, both films are flirting with rom-com status. Nuria/Julie represents the “wrong partner” that César/Brian must cast aside for his true love, while the meet-cute at the party and the perfect date at Sofía’s apartment is a staple of the genre.
Upon getting in the car with Nuria/Julie, however, the films shift into Erotic Thriller mode. In a jealous rage, the jilted lover – a classic the femme fatale who stalks and threatens César/Brian – crashes the car. As a result of the accident, she dies and he is facially disfigured.
It’s here that the two films become something of a character study: how does the well to-do narcissist protagonist handle himself when he no longer has everything?
In hindsight both Open Your Eyes and Vanilla Sky are pretty ableist, though Amenábar and co-writer Mateo Gil seem to judge César more harshly in the early parts of the film, particularly for how he treats Pelayo. By comparison, Vanilla Sky struggles to escape from the star power of its leading man; Cruise’s megawatt smile and his inherent charisma make him extremely likeable, even when he’s taking advantage of Brian and Julie.
César/David retreats from the public eye as he recovers, putting his professional position in danger from his threatening partners (They’re unseen in the Spanish film; in Vanilla Sky, there’s a brief, but amusing sequence where David names them after the Seven Dwarves). For the most part, however, the middle stretch of both films finds our lead feeling sorry for himself and fixating – to the point of obsession – about his perfect night with Sofía.
The tone of the films shifts again, this time into full-blown paranoid thriller, when César/David begins seeing Nuria/Julie in Sofía’s place. Both films tip their hand early, though, with a framing device wherein César/David is speaking with a prison psychiatrist: Antonio (Chete Lera)/ Curtis McCabe (Kurt Russell). Eventually it is revealed that César/David is in jail because he strangled Sofía to death when he believed that he was killing Nuria/Julie.
Both directors play up their protagonist’s confusion by leaning on the visual imagery of Erotic Thrillers, namely the doubling up of the two women, often during moments of sex or intimacy. There’s an undeniable madonna/whore complex in how César/David’s perfect and understanding dream girl becomes a cruel and aggressive bitch, though both ultimately forgive the violence against women with a reassuring “it was all a dream” style ending (At least in the remake, Crowe refuses to downplay the brutality of David’s actions: the bruising we see on Julie’s body is severe.)
Like any good thriller, there’s a secondary twist. For both Open Your Eyes and Vanilla Sky, it’s one that shifts the films into the realm of science-fiction. After Sofía’s murder, César/David discovers that his whole life is actually a nightmarish simulation occurring inside his cryogenically frozen head. Following the night out with Sofía and Pelayo when César was at his lowest, he ultimately opted to die by suicide so that he could have a fresh start in a fantasy dream world offered by an experimental tech company.
Both films end with the disfigured playboy deciding to end the simulation and awaken in the future by plunging off a high-rise building. In this capacity, there’s a rejection of the Erotic Thriller because César/David can no longer pursue another round of fantasy role play with Sofía.
There is a caveat, however: some would argue that the ending is ambiguous. Because we do not see the future world César/David wakes up to and, in fact only hear the same familiar words from the beginning of the film (“Open your eyes”), it is possible to read the ending as the start of a fresh round of psychosexual dreams?
So what is real and what is simulation? In the case of Open Your Eyes and Vanilla Sky, that’s up to viewers to decide…
Sex Crimes is a column that explores the legacy of erotic thrillers, from issues of marital infidelity to inappropriate underage affairs to sexualized crimes. In this subgenre, sex and violence are inexplicably intertwined as the dangers of intercourse take on a whole new meaning.
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