“The Aura” is a quiet Argentinean film noir about a taxidermist with an extremely keen eye. He also has a clever mind and notices (as well as remembers) everything he sees. For fun he often plans elaborate heists in his mind, convinced he could pull one off if he ever got the chance. In writer/director Fabian Bielinsky’s deliberate, but engrossing film, the taxidermist gets his chance.
As I’ve hinted at, this film is extremely slow and there really isn’t much dialogue. The taxidermist is never called by name so we never know anything about him really. He has few friends and his wife has just left him. Yet he’s so quick witted and smart we come along for the ride wondering what will happen. By complete and total accident, the taxidermist stumbles onto a heist that’s about to go down. Since he apparently has nothing to lose, he takes notes and gets involved. However as we soon discover, even though you might see and remember everything, you can never account for every little thing that might happen.
While an enjoyable twist on the noir genre, a little more character development would have been nice. It’s unclear what motivates the taxidermist, if anything at all. However I was willing to let that slide due to some excellent cinematography and a few scenes that were very suspenseful and well done. “The Aura” takes a while to get going, but when it does there are unexpected twists and turns that really suck you in.
