Jacques Rivette's La belle noiseuse was a four-hour meditation on the relationship between an artist and his model. Here Spanish director Víctor Erice spends half the time on the same subject, but instead of Emmanuelle Béart his model is a shapely quince tree. And Dream of Light is the more moving and visually rapturous achievement -- even though realist painter Antonio López's method is torturously painstaking and his relation to his model more like bondage and discipline. He frames the tree with rods and strings and plumb lines and inserts spikes into the ground to place his feet so he can align his point of view over the months he labors on his canvas. He erects a canopy over his head to protect himself and the tree from the elements; he marks the leaves with white paint to measure the distance they droop with the weight of the ripening fruit. His impossible dream is to capture the tree at its height of beauty and in ideal light before the fruit drops off. Interrupting him are visits from his wife and daughters and fellow painter Enrique Gran, a brawny fellow much like Anthony Quinn's Gauguin, who reminisces with him about their days as passionate students in love with their craft, reliving lost moments even as the one Antonio tries to capture eludes him.

While López is losing his battle for the light, Erice is winning his. With minimal elements -- the painter, the tree, the canvas, a handful of visitors, and a radio providing classical music and reports on the Gulf War -- he weaves together a sumptuous tapestry. As in his masterpiece, The Spirit of the Beehive, Erice taps into the nature of obsession and purity and transforms it into a dream of light.