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By: Martyn Pedler
Date: 11th Apr 08
Format: DVD
Mood: Rad
What:
The Aura
When:
Out now
Watch the trailer:
Here
Remember Nine Queens, the con-man caper flick from Argentina that lingered in small cinemasback in the early ‘00s? Director Fabian Bielinsky followed this debut with The Aura, receiving a handful of glowing reviews and sweeping the local awards before he suffered a fatal heart attack in 2006.
Even without the subtext of vanished potential, The Aura is a film in which envelopes are left unopened and mysteries go unexplained. Ricardo Darín gives a Mitchum-worthy performance as Esteban, a taxidermist who is so reclusive he might be mute. He dreamsof committing the perfect crime - and then coincidence gives him hischance.
Lazy film-makers often rely on cheap ambiguity to makethe audience do all the heavy thematic lifting. (Use your knees,people.) The Aura, though, ripples with things unspoken, sitting just under the surface. One reviewer described it as possessing a "Beckett play or a werewolf movie" waiting to burst free. It's deliberate, slow, and unsettling.
The Aura never managed a cinema release in Australia, and that's a damn shame - but much more of a shame is that Bielinsky won't make another film. This is all you get.