Take My Eyes (2006)

If you're married to an abusive husband, you should leave the bastard and take refuge with someone you trust. Pilar (Laia Marull), the battered wife at the center of the Spanish film Take My Eyes, does all of this in the opening scene, which leads you to wonder what the film could possibly have left to explore about her relationship with that husband, Antonio (Luis Tosar), a beady-eyed refrigerator salesman who acts out his corroded self-esteem by treating her like dirt. When he talks Pilar into coming back, their marriage is shown to have another side — sexy, even tender — but the tenderness never lasts; Antonio may be a good lover, but his defining feature is his short fuse. If Take My Eyes explored how a woman could still feel for a man who abused her, it might have gripped us with its difficult truths. But the movie presents Pilar and Antonio's marriage as a stale, neurotic dead end. All we can do is root for her to leave him and scratch our heads in disbelief when she doesn't.