Close My Eyes

Close My Eyes centres on Richard and his sister Natalie, who act on a long-building attraction and begin a sexual relationship. Natalie is married to Sinclair, a wealthy businessman, and the affair becomes an obsession that threatens the life she has built. Set in a Britain whose moral certainties seem to be eroding, the film places the affair against a wider sense of unease, with the emergence of AIDS exposing how fragile the characters' arrangements are.

Stephen Poliakoff wrote and directed the film, his first as director, and went on to make Century, Capturing Mary and Glorious 39. Clive Owen plays Richard, Saskia Reeves is Natalie, and Alan Rickman is Sinclair. The supporting cast includes Karl Johnson, Lesley Sharp and Kate Gartside, with around twenty credited performers. It was produced in the United Kingdom by Film4 Productions and Beambright, and runs 109 minutes.

Released in November 1991, the film received a critics' rating of 6.5 out of 10 from five reviews, a moderately positive reception. Audience response has been cooler: on IMDb it holds 6.2 out of 10 from roughly 3,900 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 5.8 from a much smaller pool of 77 votes. Critics rated it more favourably than audiences did, and the large gap in vote counts between the two sites suggests its IMDb following is more established.