It is such a great coincidence that I’m watching Victor Erice’s Close Your Eyes after watching The Spirit of the Beehive. The latter escaped Francoist censors and became an entry to many cinephiles’ watchlists, a masterpiece of slow cinema. His first feature length narrative in forty years, Close Your Eyes is about director and novelist Miguel Garay (Manolo Solo). Living in a fishing village, he returns to Madrid to talk to a TV journalist. That journalist is Marta Soriano (Helena Miguel), asking about his missing friend. That friend is also his muse Julio Arenas (Jose Coronado), whose disappearance still sparks national interest within Spain. So much so that Marta asks him to contact Julio’s daughter Ana (Ana Torrent) to contribute to her program.

The events in Close Your Eyes take place decades after Franco’s death which speaks to how political this can be. Arguably, this is less political than personal, although cinephiles can find both about a film about searching through one’s loss. Miguel is cooperating with Marta but he’s doing some of his own sleuthing, reconnecting with people in his past. He sticks to his theory that Julio’s disappearance is deliberate, starting over the way most people fantasise about. Just like Julio, sometimes he wants to leave the past alone, returning to the village where things may be volatile. But then he gets a lead that Julio may be in an asylum with a nun (Petra Martinez) running the place.

In depicting its minutiae, Close Your Eyes is proof that slow cinema doesn’t always mean boring. Half of it is because of Erice and the other half is because of the viewer, but the film finds movement. After all, it gives us a lot even during scenes depicting MIguel shuffling between Spanish cities. I mean it does make sense that a film about impermanence and losing one’s best friend has a travel aspect to it. The film’s ‘downtime’ scenes show that it’s just about Miguel as it is about Julio leaving everyone behind. A movie with several themes, Close Your Eyes’ separate arcs make its storytelling breathe. It’s not, thank the gods, a checklist of plot points.

Another thing that makes Close Your Eyes worthwhile is because of the reunion between Victor Erice and Ana Torrent. I thought I was only going to get one scene of hers within a film with a 160-ish minute running time but I’m glad to be wrong. A few generations have passed since Beehive where Torrent played curious characters. Sure, Ana as a character partly exists as one of the conduits for Miguel to make progress reports about Julio. Another way of looking at Ana is as the voice of sanity, reminding Miguel that Julio may be ‘lost’. The film, though, gives a more fulfilling answer as to whether or not Julio and the man in the asylum are one.

Watch Close Your Eyes at the Lightbox starting this Friday.