>>REVIEW
THE AURA
STARRING Ricardo Darín, Dolores Fonzi and Manuel Rodal
DIRECTED BY Fabián Bielinsky
Opens Friday, June 22
Uptown Screen
Director Fabián Bielinsky is not like the rest of his film noir brethren. He avoids jamming his twisty films with smash cuts and intricate dolly moves, avoids cuss-filled pop culture rants and violence doled out in bloody chunks. His short oeuvre contains methodically paced noir thrillers placed in the crumbling shade of modern Spain. The Aura falls into this mode, as well as recalling the obtuseness of his previous work. The last film before suffering a fatal heart attack, Bielinsky reminds us of the way noir once was – a monochromatic bleakness that smothered the threat of violence.
Ricardo Darín plays an epileptic taxidermist with a photographic memory who daydreams perfect heists in bank lines. After his wife may or may not have left him, the taxidermist accepts a friend’s invitation to go out hunting. Out in the Patagonian forest, abandoned by his friend, the taxidermist accidentally kills a man named Carlos Dietrich (Manuel Rodal). Unfazed by the murder, the taxidermist slowly finds out the criminal secret life Dietrich had and attempts to take over to live out his cops and robbers fantasies. Unfortunately, the plans for an armoured van heist begin to unravel as the taxidermist barely remains one step ahead.
Though it may sound typically noir, Bielinsky has created a character piece trapped in a noir narrative, thereby implicating the audience. With femme fatales dressed in smoke and gun fights under the moonlight, noir has an irresistible draw. It’s what most post-modern directors take from the genre. Bielinsky strips it of all its gritty glamour and leaves behind a hollow man. The taxidermist is a character who loves guns and heists, but is averse to hunting. He sabotages his friend’s attempt to shoot a deer, but later follows a bleeding man and watches him die. The taxidermist is not the invincible noir protagonist, pushed by circumstance to get away in bursts of violence. He’s not one step ahead of all the other criminals, outsmarting the thugs and the gangsters. In the end, he’s a small-minded man who almost gets drowned by his nihilistic noir fantasies.
Unfortunately, that’s all we get. Bielinsky favours meanderingly paced shots of his characters moving about his noir landscapes in silence. Instead of bringing us closer, we’re kept at a distance. Just like his previous film, Nine Queens, The Aura becomes too obtuse for the sake of a twist. |
Copyright ©2007 FFWD. All rights reserved.