Disabled women make great victims and this sweaty, stylish Spanish thriller pays homage to them all, from mute Helen in The Spiral Staircase to blind Susy in Wait Until Dark.
As in those films, physical frailty brings out the worst in men. The special ingredient introduced by director Guillem Morales (a protege of Guillermo del Toro, who produced this film) is a heroine willing to open herself up.
On a hunch, Julia (Belen Rueda) visits the house of her blind, twin sister, Sara (Rueda again), only to find her dangling from a rope. To the horror of her husband, Julia starts interviewing the neighbours. Her own sight is fading and clever camera work allows us to see the world through her inadequate eyes. Stress makes her vision worse and things are about to get very stressful.
Rueda is a fantastic actress, tightly wound, but never brittle. From the minute she's on screen we identify with Julia's plight - not just the loss of a loved one, but the realisation that to be disabled in the 21st century is to somehow have sinned. One of many impressively claustrophobic scenes has Julia spying on a group of blind women in a locker room. They are discussing Sara's relationship. As far as they're concerned, Sara got what she deserved.
A night-time encounter with a care-worker called Ivan is the film's last masterstroke. Having created an exquisitely retro atmosphere, Morales suddenly plumps for camp-horror silliness and even our feelings for Julia are affected. She crashes around once too often. "Lady," I found myself thinking, "get a stick!"
Taken as a whole, however, this cannily uncanny film resonates. Events demand that our protagonist see men as untrustworthy. I'm not going to reveal what happens to Julia's eyeballs; the lovely, far more shocking, twist is that her faith remains intact.
Julia's Eyes (Los Ojos De Julia)
Cert: 15
