In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Nude Scene, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, Penélope Cruz reprises her role from Open Your Eyes in the American remake Vanilla Sky,only with substantially less nudity.
American remakes of foreign films are hardly a new phenomenon. Hollywood has always been creatively bankrupt and eager to bypass the hard work of coming up with and interesting ideas when they can just borrow them from elsewhere. At the same time, not all American remakes of foreign films are a total bust. The Magnificent Seven repurposed Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samuraifor that most American of genres, the western, while Martin Scorsese's The Departed enriched the 2002 Hong Kong action flick Infernal Affairsbyreframingits story in a uniquely American way. Basically, the good ones require a filmmaker willing to take the time and effort to find the universality within these foreign films and adjust it accordingly to American sensibilities.
One of the more interesting examples of this is Cameron Crowe's 2001 flick Vanilla Sky, which was a remake ofAlejandro Amenábar's 1997 Spanish film Open Your Eyes. Where Amenábar's film was a modest project with a relatively small budget andbig ambitions, Crowe's remake featured two of the biggest stars of the time—Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz—in a film with a budget over thirty times that of the original. Putting that aside, however, Crowe's film is actually a surprisingly faithful remake which even impressed Amenábar himself who said the following after seeing the film (via The Uncool)...
"Cameron has all my respect and admiration. Respect, for having plumbed the deepest meaning of the work. Admiration, for having sought new viewpoints and a fresh approach to the mise-en-scene, giving the film his own unmistakable touch.Vanilla Skyis as true the original spirit as it is irreverent towards its form, and that makes it a courageous, innovative work. I think I can say that, for me, the projects are like two very special brothers. They have the same concerns, but their personalities are quite different. In other words, they sing the same song but with quite different voices: one likes opera, and the other likes rock and roll.”
Perhaps the biggest and most obvious similarity between the two films is that they both feature Penélope Cruzin the same role. While Cruz was an established actress in her native Spain by 1997, she was still relatively unknown in the States when she was cast in Crowe's remake. She had madea few English language films prior to Vanilla Sky, The Hi-Lo Country, Woman on Top, and All the Pretty Horses—all of which bombed at the box office—and Blow, which had a better life on home video than it did in theaters.
Art house buffs certainly knew about Cruz thanks to her work in crossover hits likeJamón Jamón, the Oscar nominated Belle Époque, and the Oscar winning All About My Mother, but she was a new face to most American filmgoers. The more cynical among you might think that accounts for why she entered into a three-year relationship with Tom Cruise, which certainly helped to boost her profile, but without knowing them personally it's hard to do muchother than speculate.The association with Cruise definitely helpedgive Cruz's American career take off, but she seemed to be on the precipice of breaking out in a big way regardless.
While we spoke earlier about all of the similarities between Open Your Eyes and Vanilla Sky, there is one glaring difference between the two films and that is Cruz's nude scenes. The set-up for both scenes is the same... the protagonist—César in the original, David in the remake—has survived a car crash in which his psychopathic ex attempted to kill them both. Just prior to this accident, however,David and César became obsessed with a woman named Sofia (Cruz) and circumstances bring the two together post-accident, helping the protagonist get back on his feet after being disfigured. Once their faces are surgically repaired, they finally feel confident enough to get Sofia in the sack, though it proves a fateful decision for her in both versions of the story.
In Open Your Eyes, Cruz straddles her César in bed, messing with him by pretending to be a coin-operated robot who malfunctions, keeping the scene relatively light with an air of menace brewing underneath. The music—pardon the pun—underscores this with an ominousness that nicely foreshadows the doom on the horizon...
Crowe, on the other hand, prefers a musical montage set to Bob Dylan's "Fourth Time Around" followed by a jovial chat in bed about David wanting to come back in his next life as the mole on her left breast. There's no sense that just a few minutes from now, he's going to murder her...
Personal preference will dictate which version of the scene you prefer from a tonal standpoint within the context of the film around it. Open Your Eyes doesn't let a sweet moment lull the audience into a false sense of security, making her shocking murder several minutes later seem more fully foreshadowed. Vanilla Sky opts to pull the rug out from under the audience, making the murder more shocking because it seemingly comes out of nowhere.
One thing that cannot be denied, however, is that the nude scene in Open Your Eyes is substantially better than its American counterpart. It remains one of Cruz's best nude scenes thanks to being well-lit, well framed, and well, just better in every way. In Vanilla Sky, you have to contend with her sharing a couch with Cruise, whose handsiness consistently blocks our view. By any objective measure, it's a worse nude scene than its predecessor.
What, if anything, that has to do with American sensibilities versus those of our Spanish compatriots is open to interpretation, but I think it has less to do with America's more prudish leanings. Rather, I think, it has more to do with director Cameron Crowe getting too artsy for his own good. The montage, the music cue, and the framing of the shot are all designed to make the moment feel more relatable to your average filmgoer. However, it kinda kills the mood for nudity fanatics in the audience. You can endlessly debate which version of the story is better made and told, but you really can't argue which one has the better Penélope Cruz nude scene. All you need to do in order to make that distinction is simply Open Your Eyes.
Catch up withour most recent editions ofAnatomy of a Nude Scene
—Joyce Hyser Becomes an 80s Icon in Just One of the Guys
—Charlize Theron Lands on the Map with2 Days in the Valley
—SirensMay be Plural, But All Eyes Were on Elle MacPherson
—Eva Green's Star is Born in Bertolucci'sThe Dreamers
—Phoebe Cates Takes a Dip and Becomes a Legend inFast Times at Ridgemont High
—Kim Basinger Gets All Wet for Mickey Rourke in9½ Weeks
—Molly Ringwald Does Her Only Topless Scene inMalicious
—Straw DogsRaises That Pesky Issue of Consent
—No Amount of Plausible Deniability Can Excuse What's Going On inCaligula
—The Devil's AdvocateFills Our Eyes with Double Vision
—Schlockmeister Ed Wood Transitions to Booby Movies withOrgy of the Dead
—36-Year Old Diane Lane Plays a MILF inUnfaithful
—Natalie Portman Goes Nude in Wes Anderson's Short FilmHotel Chevalier
—Orson Welles Distracts Us with a Nude Oja Kodar inF for Fake
—Japan's Most Notorious Director MakesIn the Realm of the SensesHis Most Notorious Film
**Click Here to Read All Past Editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene/Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy**
