False images and false mirrors: The film Abre los ojos by Alejandro Amenábar

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the film Abre los ojos (1997) by Spanish filmmakerAlejandro Amenábar. With a postmodern frame of disorder, chaos and uncertainty, thisfilm offers a redefinition of the gender roles, without false images and false ´mirrors´.Thus, around the 21st century, the stereotypical feminine roles – virgin and femmefatale – are convincingly questioned and resignified, and the male heroe is demystified.Amenábar succeeds in edifying new cultural structures, deconstructing feminineidentity form the masculine gaze in order to understand and revise the engenderingcontext of such reductive patriarchal gaze. Hence the title of the film “open your eyes”as an imperative and necessary call for society to “open the eyes” from within outwardand from outside to inside.