A FITTING EPITAPH? : Fabian Bielinsky's 'The Aura' [7/10]

Sunday, 24 June 2007

An engrossingly atmospheric, noirish crime-tale with metaphysical, transcendent and existential ambitions, The Aura is the second and, sadly, final feature-film from writer-director Bielinsky - previously responsible for 2000's critical and box-office hit Nine Queens. But while both movies are enjoyably far-fetched affairs in which plausibility consistently takes a back seat to stylistic swagger, they seem models of gritty believability when juxtaposed with the unique circumstances of Bielinsky's own career.*

Unique and, in the end, tragic: Bielinsky died of a heart attack in June 2006, at the start of a summer which was to rob world cinema of three notably promising talents. Uruguay's Juan Pablo Rebella (who wrote and directed the wonderful Whisky with Pablo Stoll) committed suicide at 32 a couple of weeks later; Romania's Cristian Nemescu (whose Marilena de la P7 was one of the decade's most acclaimed shorts) died aged 27 in a car crash while in post-production on his feature debut. Nemescu's film, California Dreamin' was completed after his death and, under the title California Dreamin' (Endless) - the suffix somewhat awkwardly referencing the 'unfinished' nature of the project - won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes this year.

The Cannes 'cut' of California Dreamin' runs 155 minutes - Variety reviewer Alissa Simon reckoned it "would benefit from substantial trims," the implication being that Nemescu's colleagues were (perhaps understandably) guilty of excessive reverence in their application of the editing scissors to what had become their friend's final cinematic 'testament.' And watching The Aura it's tempting to wonder whether a similar situation prevailed in the editing-room - the film clocks in at 138 minutes, but editors Alejandro Carillo Penovi and Fernando Pardo could easily have reduced that running-time by half an hour or so without sacrificing anything in the way of comprehension. There's one major flaw with such a theory, however: Bielinsky was in fact alive throughout post-production, and his sudden demise occurred more than nine months after the film's Buenos Aires world premiere.

The Aura, then, is exactly the film Bielinsky wanted to make - its length, calm and measured pacing a clear indication that, after the frenzied doubletalk and mind-spinning twists of the crowdpleasing Nine Queens, he was staking his claim to be regarded as a Serious Artist. If anything, The Aura should and could perhaps have been longer than what seems, on paper, a somewhat excessive running-time: Bielinsky occasionally doesn't seem sure whether he's making another twisty crime-thriller or crafting a multi-dimensional statement about the human condition. The emphasis should perhaps have been placed on the latter rather than the former - the messy business of heist, double-cross and gun-play fading quietly into the background as we're drawn further into the protagonist's mysterious inner world.

The script actually predates Nine Queens by well over a decade, having been written back in the early eighties when Bielinsky was fresh out of film school and heavily under the influence of the stories of Argentinian writers Jorge Luis Borges, and Julio Cortazar, and also John Boorman's 1972 film Deliverance. These influences (each of them in various ways metaphysical, transcendent and/or existential) are evident in both the ambience and detail of The Aura, although there's also a significant dose of American film noir from the 1940s.

The main character (played by Nine Queens' co-lead Ricardo Darin) is a taciturn, withdrawn Buenos Aires taxidermist in his early forties - never named in the film, he's is identified only as 'Taxidermista' in the end credits. During a hunting-trip in a remote, forested rural area, he accidentally (?) shoots a man - who turns out to be implicated in the planning of an armed robbery. The taxidermist, whose hobbies include the planning of 'perfect' crimes, senses an opportunity to turn theory into practice - but finds that he's entering very dangerous and unpredictable waters indeed, especially as he's prone to fall into epileptic 'trances' at particularly stressful moments...

As with Nine Queens, the less the audience knows about The Aura going in the better, so this review will not discuss the plot in any further detail. Indeed, this is a film where the plot - though intricate, complex and surprising - is much less important than atmosphere or character. This is a study of an unusual man, in an unusual environment, given unusual opportunities to explore his fundamental nature - a nature which may be subject to unexpected change and revelation. The contributions of Darin and cinematographer Checco Varese (shooting in Cinemascope) are therefore crucial, and both respond strongly to the particular challenges set for them by Bielinsky's script.

Darin, playing a character diametrically opposite to his seen-it-all smooth-talker in Nine Queens, is magnetic in a tough role where he's present in pretty much every scene. He provides the film with its still, enigmatic centre, and it's testament to Darin's skill that he isn't often upstaged by what is one of the most remarkable animal performances in recent cinema: the wolf-like dog 'Eva', who's roughly equal parts uber-faithful working 'pet' and unsettlingly omniscient, ghostly avatar.

Neil Young
24th June, 2007

THE AURA : [7/10] : El Aura : Argentina 2005 : Fabian BIELINSKY : 138 mins (approx)
seen at The Tyneside Cinema, Gateshead (UK), 22nd June 2007 - public show (paid £6.20)

*

Fabián Bielinsky, film director and writer: born Buenos Aires 3 February 1959; married (one son); died São Paulo, Brazil 28 June 2006.

   The early years of the 21st century were tough ones for Argentina, given the country's first-round knock-out in the 2002 World Cup and a pronounced period of economic collapse. Oddly, though, this coincided with an upsurge of interest in Latin America cinema. Brazil and Mexico made headlines with City of God and Y Tu Mamá También respectively, but Argentina also drew attention with the Oscar-nominated Son of the Bride and Fabián Bielinsky's début feature, the quick-witted scam caper Nine Queens.
   Bielinsky had waited a long time for this hit, having directed his first short, an adaptation of Julio Cortázar's story "Continuidad de los Parques", as a 13-year-old at the Buenos Aires National High School in 1972. Bielinsky was an avid moviegoer from a young age: he was so moved by John Boorman's Deliverance (1972) that he refused to budge from a cinema until he was given a poster of the film.
   He went on to study at Argentina's National Cinematographic Institute during which time his adaptation of Jorge Luis Borges's short story "La Espera" ("The Wait") won first prize at the 1983 Huesca International Short Film Festival. Graduating the same year, he worked as assistant director on several features and roughly 400 commercials, while teaching on the side. In 1998, tired of being an AD, he entered his script for Nine Queens into the Patagonik Film Group contest. The plot spun a web of double-bluffs around an experienced con artist and his charge as they try to sell the fake rare stamps of the title. Out of 350 entrants, he took the first prize of financing to shoot the film.
   Released in Argentina in August 2000, Nine Queens was an emphatic success. It won seven Argentinean Film Critics Association awards, including those for director, screenplay, film and actor (Ricardo Darín), and even out-grossed Ridley Scott's Gladiator in the country. Altogether it won 21 awards worldwide. On the film's UK release in 2002, critics noted its superiority to then-recent US scam movies, such as Frank Oz's star-heavy but stodgy The Score (2001) and David Mamet's tired Heist (2001). Comparisons between Queens and early Mamet were rife, but Bielinsky, ever the cinephile, preferred to cite earlier influences such as Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon (1973) and Federico Fellini's Il Bidone (1955).
   In the United States in 2002, Variety named Bielinsky one of their 10 directors to watch. In 2004, George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh produced a remake of Nine Queens called Criminal, which, despite being decently acted, lacked the original's acute sense of context. The double-dealing detailed in Bielinsky's script seemed to prophesy Argentina's economic turmoil.
   Bielinsky opted not to make his follow-up in Hollywood. Based on a script he wrote in 1983 and inspired by Deliverance, The Aura (2005) is a slow-burning Argentinean thriller about a taxidermist plotting the perfect crime. It scooped awards at the Cartagena and Havana film festivals, as well as six Silver Condors from the Argentinean Film Critics Association. After the ceremony for the last, Bielinsky began casting for commercials in Brazil. It was there that he died of a heart attack in his hotel room, at the age of 47.

                Kevin Harley

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