Close My Eyes (film)
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| Close Your Eyes | |
|---|---|
 Promotional movie poster for the film |
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| Directed by | Stephen Poliakoff |
| Produced by | Therese Pickard |
| Written by | Stephen Poliokoff |
| Starring | Alan Rickman Clive Owen Saskia Reeves |
| Music by | Michael Gibbs |
| Cinematography | Witold Stok |
| Release date(s) | 1991 |
| Running time | 100.5 Minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Close My Eyes is a 1991 film written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff and starring Alan Rickman, Clive Owen and Saskia Reeves as well as Lesley Sharp and Karl Johnson. Music was by Michael Gibbs (who also did the music for Poliakoff's next film Century) and the film was produced for Beambright and Film Four International by Therese Pickard.
The film won the Evening Standard film award for best picture in 1991.
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[edit] Themes
The film is largely a grand-scale re-working of Poliakoff's earlier stage play Hitting Town in that the main plot remains one of brother/sister incest, although the film also covers the chaos (as the film sees it) that was the initial stages of the London Docklands development, the late 1980s recession and attitudes towards AIDS (then still a relatively new and much feared illness).
[edit] Cast
Alan Rickman as Sinclair, a very wealthy, intellectual, and slightly eccentric stock broker/financial analyst who marries Natalie after meeting her when she applies for a job working for him. (Rickman was first on the billing and the credits of this film, despite the fact that the part of Sinclair neither has the most on screen presence nor appears first).
Clive Owen as Richard, Natalie's brother and (when first encountered in 1985) a student town planner, who becomes very successful in this career, but in 1991 gives it up to work for Urban Alert - a magazine dedicated to highlighting the inadequacies and injustices of the London Docklands development.
Saskia Reeves as Natalie, Richard's beautiful elder sister. She has worked through a series of low-level administrative jobs she hated before meeting Sinclair. While married to him she becomes a partner in a recruitment agency. She and Richard were never close as children because they each lived with a different parent when their parents split up.
Karl Johnson as Colin, Richard's boss and the editor of Urban Alert.
Lesley Sharp as Jessica, Richard's co-worker whom he tries (but fails) to seduce.
Kate Garside as Paula, a girl who works in the restaurant that Urban Alert staff usually order food from, and whom Richard has a brief relationship with.
Niall Buggy as Geof, a somewhat smarmy city planner of London Docklands who is the bete noir of Urban Alert.
[edit] Synopsis
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The plot summary in this article or section is too long or detailed compared to the rest of the article. Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot. |
The film opens in 1985 to find town planning student Richard Gillespie (Owen) walking through a scene of tower-blocks en-route to visiting his elder sister Natalie (Reeves). Natalie is in a fairly bad way have recently bought a (fairly noisy and unpleasant) flat with her (not named) lover only to have him leave her within two months. She is unhappy in her job as a buyer for "that bloody awful store" (as Richard puts it). On Richard's insistence they go for a late night walk and Natalie seems to cheer up, but on waking in the middle of the night (due to loud music from the neighbouring flat) Richard finds Natalie still awake and still extremely depressed. Richard's attempts to lighten the mood are ended when Natalie pulls him into a somewhat passionate embrace, although she immediately apologises saying that she "just wants something to hug" and that even Richard would do. He says nothing and simply stares impassively at the multitude of candles in Natalie's room.
There then follows a montage of short scenes that cover the next two times that Richard and Natalie meet, once in 1987 and once in 1990 (they are not usually close since they each went to a different parent when their parents divorced). In this time Richard has become an extremely successful town planner (and something of a Lothario as well) whereas Natalie's career has stagnated in a succession of low-level administrative jobs which she hates.
The main body of the film opens on a panorama of the building site of London Docklands in 1991. Richard, seemingly converted to the environment and sustainable town planning, is interviewed for a job with the magazine Urban Alert - apparently formed to put pressure on the planners of Docklands to consider the needs of the local residents (something which was considerably lacking at the time of this development). Magazine Editor Colin (Johnson) is somewhat sceptical of Richard's intentions but takes him on anyway to work with his deputy Jessica (Sharp). Meanwhile Natalie applied for a job as secretary to a very powerful and rich Stock Analyst called Sinclair Bryant (Rickman) and, as Richard puts it, "she didn't get the job but she got him" and the two are now married.
Richard, who didn't go to the wedding, finally visits Natalie in her palatial home in Petersham to be greeted by a very different woman who now speaks in a home counties accent (previous Natalie (like Richard) spoke in an East midlands voice) and is clad in designer clothes. Overcoming his surprise he is finally introduced to Sinclair and the two get on extremely well as they are both highly intelligent and would seem to have similar interests in literature (Proust) and a fairly similar outlook on life.
It appears, however, that Natalie is not fully happy with her life (she feels "small" next to Sinclair) because, shortly after this she visits Richard at his flat, and the two appear to be unable to resist each other. While attempting to prevent their attraction for each other from spilling over, they end up naked on the floor. Natalie tries to make Richard stop her from making love. He stops her and wanders to the other side of the room. Eventually, they succumb to their desires and have sex.
Afterwards, they try to avoid each other but this is difficult because Sinclair invites Richard round to a social gathering and the two (still attracted to each other) agree to meet again to sort things through. Meanwhile, at work (which Richard, despite his cavalier attitude, is very good at) Colin has developed full blown AIDS and informed the office. This leads to a very embarrassing scene on the platform of a Docklands Light Railway station where Colin and Richard try to speak to each other as if everything was completely normal.
Natalie and Richard meet again in Sinclair's parents' flat and again make love, although this time Natalie is quite firm that their relationship must end because she (as she puts it) fancies Richard and loves him as a brother but he is beginning to love her as lover and this will go wrong. During this weekend Sinclair twigs that Natalie is having an affair with someone because she was not in Nuneaton where she claimed to be (he tries to call her when the dishwasher floods the kitchen) yet still claims that this was where she was on her return.
Things then go from bad to worse as Richard becomes obsessed with Natalie (although she has broken off their relationship) and when he turns up unexpectedly at their house he finds only Sinclair who promptly whisks him off on a boat trip he had planned for himself and grills him on the subject of Natalie's affair. Sinclair does not yet suspect Richard but will not believe that Richard doesn't know who it is - although he seems to respect his refusal to say, concluding simply with "You know I'll find out sooner or later."
At Richard's work Colin is now terminally ill but Richard takes him out of hospital one last time to confront an unpleasant city planner with facts they intend to publish in their magazine. The two of them comprehensively wipe the floor with him and Colin in particular scores a major social point by half eating a sandwich, offering the other half to Richard (who takes a bite without issue) and then offering it to the City Planner who is terrified to even touch it because of Colin's illness.
On hearing that (because of the recession) Sinclair and Natalie plan to move to America Richard loses his self-control completely, harasses Natalie in public at a hotel and then attempts suicide by taking sleeping pills - unsuccessfully as Natalie returns unexpectedly to his flat. Richard is invited to their leaving party on condition that he behaves. Richard attends with Jessica (now the editor as Colin has died) but abandons her quickly after arrival to go on a hunt for Natalie. When finds her he announces he wants to kill her and roughly (and without regard to onlookers) pulls her off the site and into the countryside. The two fight in the middle of a road with Richard accusing Natalie of using him but he then has to pull her safety when they are both nearly run over by a lorry. Natalie then apologises for using him and says that she and Sinclair aren't leaving the country after all but wanted to have the party anyway. They return dishevelled and the guests quickly leave. Sinclair appears and, though he doesn't wish to hear their confession, he makes it quite clear that he knows what has happened, and that he forgives them.
At the end of the film the three of them walk, together, into an autumn sunset by the river.
[edit] Select quotations
"I wish I could close my eyes and wake up and it would be gone, this feeling." - Natalie on loneliness at being left by her lover.
"Being single, it's not as easy as it used to be." - Richard shortly after having had sex with his sister for the second time.
"The rest, I don't want to know. It's enough for me to know that the worst is over." - Sinclair on discovering the truth.
[edit] Locations
The film was shot mainly in London and, specifically, London Docklands with Sinclair and Natalie's house being in Petersham (near Richmond). The grand party that is the stage for the film's climax was shot at Polesden Lacey in Bookham, Surrey.
[edit] DVD/video releases
The film was originally released on VHS video by Artificial Eye and is now available on DVD in the UK and the US on the Cinemaclub label. The film has an 18 certificate in the UK and an R Certificate in the US.
