BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Kirpianuscus only story of a meeting. not different by many others. but special for the circle of community who is used as scene. a film who has not great heroes and, maybe, not a touching love story. only the clash between family, passion and need to be fair to law, family, yours feelings. result - a beautiful film. not spectacular but almost strange. for the dialog who preserves shadows of taboo. for the characters who seems be sketches of theirs desires. for the delicate manner to translate slices of silence in image and word. for the tension who is different by the films from the same genre. the delicacy used for present the story. that is the basic virtue. and the key for a film who has force for the wise exploration of fragility of an relationship.

Armand emotion. as silk ladder. a love story in forbidden area. religion and relationship. nude tale about two different men and their sin/error/adventure/crazy act. few words. drops of gestures, looks and shadows of feelings. ball of sadness and strange happiness, vulnerabilities, courage and fear. a white paper and crumbs of letters. a stranger as seed of a dangerous experience. family, society and a young man from nowhere to nowhere. a ritual bath and work in a kosher meat shop. death of father and new forms of beginning. fragility of old world and ambiguous place in tradition circle. it is not a movie about gay love but only love. it is not a movie about Juwish traditional laws but only picture of a closed society. it is not just a movie. but images of a trip behind ordinary expectations.

laura_macleod Eyes Wide Open is a really depressing film and not because of the sexuality and the suppression but because of the religious and cultural straightjackets that those people live in. I found it fascinating to observe the lack of beauty in the film. Everything was drab and breaking down. Everyone was in black or covered or not seen. They came alive through their religious ideology in a man's world - women were not present in the teaching and the camaraderie. To be a good man meant to work and have no joy, just read the religious dogma. This is surely an advertisement for why this kind of ideology causes conflict as it is not harmonious to life or the purpose of life = to find happiness (as spoken by one of the world's greatest philosophers - Aristotle). The woman was just there to care for the house and the family and to have children and be a sexual vessel to be honest. Then along comes a homosexual element and a man who challenges the sickness in the society and all the hangups. Of course it is very traumatic for any community stuck in the dark ages to have a 'heretic' in their midst, especially a gay one. Eyes Wide Open is a very good title because all the people in this film go around with their eyes firmly shut to life and its beauty and freedom (god given to everyone). Human beings cause all the problems, not god if it exists - how do any of us really know? The feeling of the sexuality is hidden and dirty and done in the midst of a butcher's shop with dead carcasses all around. The metaphor is vivid. However, the film is bleak and there is only way way out for the protagonist and it is a sad conclusion. Just throughout the film I was yearning for them both to break free of the cultural and mental straightjacket that was self inflicted - tear off those black outfits, throw the hats to the wind and get on an aeroplane to somewhere in the world where they both could live what 'god' had made them for - happiness and love. Felt very sorry for the wife though but she was a stuck sheep. There was no way out of this eyes wide open film - the cultural burden was sadly too heavy and that made the film leave a bad taste in the mouth in spite of its breakthrough subject matter.

Capo-idFilm Understated, impressionist drama in which the two central performances and the effective, naturally-lit photography are let down by too many scenes of stilted silence; it's quite alright to make a point of people not understanding one another, but too much contemporary art cinema seems to rely on an affected Bressonianism that doesn't quite gel with surrounding authenticity. The starkest example here is a scene in which a character tries to explain the excitement he feels from an adulterous affair: "I was dead," he says. "Now I feel alive." Even excusing the trite phrasing, the line doesn't quite ring true given how flat, lifeless and unchanged the character has previously seemed. Perhaps, of course, that's the point; but that doesn't make the film any stronger.