Reviews

Many previous posters can't seem to get past the "it was just a dream" ending. Fair enough, but what's important here is that the dream is *created* by Cesar. As Duvernois tells him, the virtual reality is set up to show him what he wants to see. Thus when his life takes a turn for the worse, it's because he wants it to happen that way. The question is, why would somebody who had the opportunity to create a perfect life turn it into a nightmare?

The solution lies in the shallowness of Cesar's character. He is a totally self-centered individual, a man who depends on his money and looks to get him whatever he wants. Metaphorically, he is the man in his dream in the opening scene -- alone in an empty city of his own creation. His friendship with Pelayo is in name only. His claims of "love" for Sophia are, at least at first, just as shallow - inspired by pictures on a wall, and easily tossed aside when Nuria offers him a freebie.

Why, then, does the dream go bad? Because once Cesar's face is disfigured, he sees that Sophia only loved his outer beauty. He sees that money can't buy him happiness - it can't even buy him a new face. He sees how easily his "best friend" turns away from him when the going gets rough. And Cesar is never able to resolve these issues while alive - indeed, he chooses suicide to rid himself of the pain. But just as our dreams show us truths we'd rather not face, Cesar's dream brings back these questions in the form of contradictions. What if he, like Sophia, fell in love only have his lover reappear as somebody he didn't recognize? (In his case, Sophia switched for Nuria.) What if only he could see how ugly he really was? Cesar's dream goes bad because he wants it to go bad -- as he is trying to figure out the "reality" of his physical life, he is also probing the reality of his soul.

I found this to be a fascinating movie, not despite the ending but because of it. Like this year's Mulholland Drive, the film examines the way we construct our dreams both to hide reality and to better understand it. I give it a 9.