Full Description
It’s a hazy and baffling new world for Juan following an operation that grants him partial sight after a lifetime of blindness. As he peers closely at the blurry shapes and colors around him, he begins to see the world for what it truly is—and perhaps life was better when he was blind. In Ilusiónes Opticas, award-winning director Cristián Jiménez delivers a melancholy and satirical comedy that pokes fun at our obsession with appearances, taking a hard look, so to speak, at the way we perceive the world. As Juan stumbles through his new life of vision, Rafa, a security guard at the shiny new mall, becomes obsessed with a wealthy divorcée and shoplifter who pulls him into her bizarre life of household chores and clandestine encounters. His sister Manuela, meanwhile, wonders if she’d have better luck with men if she got breast implants. She inadvertently becomes the object of affection for David, an agnostic Jew whose teenage son toys with self-circumcision while striving to pull his father back toward his Judaic roots. Reality becomes tangled up in perception as winter closes in on this quirky circle of ordinary people, leaving us to wonder if perhaps the world we think we know is no more than an optical illusion.
