El aura (The Aura) (2005)

September 15, 2005 (Argentina), release date

Directed by Fabián Bielinsky

Screenplay by Fabián Bielinsky

Music by Dario Eskenazi

Edited by Alejandro Carrillo Penovi and Fernando Pardo

Cinematography by Checco Varese

Ricardo Darín as Esteban Espinosa, the taxidermist

Dolores Fonzi as Diana Dietrich

Pablo Cedrón as Sosa

Nahuel Pérez Biscayart as Julio

Jorge D’Elía as Urien

Alejandro Awada as Sontag

Rafael Castejón as Vega

Manuel Rodal as Carlos Dietrich

Walter Reyno as Montero

Distributed by Buena Vista International and IFC Films

 El aura is an unusual neo-noir. It has many of the typical characteristics of noir and neo-noir films: murder; the elaborate planning of a heist; an almost constant threat of violence; muted, drab color throughout. Almost the entire film seems green-tinted, with black, gray, white, brown, and more green. Even though most of the film is shot outdoors, we rarely see the sun. But other nontraditional features give El aura the neo-noir label: Esteban’s seeming lack of motivation, Dietrich’s dog as a character throughout, the relentless music and the many times that it is the only sound that can be heard during the film, the significance of the title and Esteban’s epilepsy.

Esteban’s epilepsy is a key feature of his life and thus the plot of the film. The film opens with Esteban sprawled on a white floor crisscrossed with black lines; the camera is at floor level, then moves up and then over Esteban. The camera’s movement isn’t large, but it’s a disorienting shot all the same. Esteban had an attack while getting money out of the ATM. The only sound is the beeping (one, two, three, pause; one, two, three, pause) of an ATM machine, but viewers don’t know that at first. Esteban could be in a hospital. Finally, the seizure is over. Esteban rises, and the camera reveals that he is in the front of a bank.

(This blog post about El aura contains spoilers.)

Fate also plays a large role in El aura. Esteban lives at the mercy of his seizures. He doesn’t want to go hunting with his friend Sontag when Sontag first extends the invitation, but Esteban changes his mind when he arrives home to discover that his wife has left him. A series of mishaps bring the two friends to the Dietrichs’ rental cabin, and from that point on, fate seems to take on an even more pronounced role in the plot and in Esteban’s life.

Diana Dietrich asks Esteban about his attacks. In a very poignant scene, he describes what it’s like to have an epileptic seizure to Diana:

• Esteban: “A few seconds before it happens, I know I’m going to have an attack. There’s a moment, a shift. The doctors call it an aura. Things suddenly change. It’s as if . . . as if everything stopped . . . and a door opened in your head that lets things in.”

• Diana: “What things?”

• Esteban: “Sounds. Music. Voices. Images. Smells. The smell of school, the kitchen, the family. It tells me the fit is coming and there’s nothing you can do to stop it . . . nothing. It’s horrible. And it’s perfect because during those few seconds, you’re free. There’s no choice, there’s no alternative. Nothing for you to decide. Everything tightens up, gets narrower and you surrender yourself.”

Esteban explains his seizures as a loss of control: He must surrender himself to a seizure after it starts because there is nothing else he can do. When he has a seizure, the viewer also experiences it as a loss of control because the plot is momentarily interrupted. But in his last seizure in the film, Esteban does not lose control like he did in the past. This time, he sees what he must do to survive, and he does exactly what his mind, during the seizure, presents to him. Instead of being at the mercy of his epilepsy, it seems to give him a resolution to his current and—desperate—situation.

The film ends in Esteban’s office. He is back at work as a taxidermist. The camera pans away from Esteban at his desk to Dietrich’s dog lying on the floor in Esteban’s office. The camera moves in steadily on the dog’s face, then its eyes, then one eye. The scene is unnerving. I couldn’t help wondering if there were another message in that closing scene. Is the viewer supposed to compare Esteban to the dog and its most primitive instincts? Was Esteban at the mercy of his epileptic seizures until a survival instinct in his brain presented a solution and kept him alive in a desperate situation?

El aura doesn’t provide any answers. Esteban appears to be completely alone in his dilemma; he’s the only character guarding the central secret of the plot. But viewers know it and are thus drawn into Esteban’s story and his point of view. The film offers nothing definitive about Esteban and his actions, and viewers can interpret the story in El aura for themselves. This last characteristic of the film does not make it a neo-noir, but it does make the film worth seeing.