(This article previously appeared in Film International.)
Auricular Confession is Martin Del Carpio’s hauntingly poetic tribute to the memory of his father: an 11 minute sequence of dances, rituals, and evocative images of a troubled man (beautifully portrayed by Esteban Licht), illuminated by William Murray’s starkly suggestive monochromatic cinematography.
Licht appears naked in nearly every shot, but the images aren’t overtly erotic, and his nakedness seems more a sign of emotional and spiritual vulnerability than one of arousal. We see him writing a personal confession in a notebook: a poem about being “love-sick.” His ghostly image, half transparent, sits in a wooden chair, stroking a wooden crucifix. He hangs his head in an attitude of mourning, seated at a table carved with the words “In Remembrance of Me.” In a close-up, we see him sensuously licking a flower, then eating one of the petals. The pleasure with which he licks the flower suggests that his “confession” is sexual. Shots of the man fervently praying with a handful of rosaries are intercut with shots of him eating the flower, conveying a powerful sense of guilt about physical pleasure. All of the scenes in the film are set in a decaying, abandoned building with peeling paint and dirty floors, suggesting that the man has allowed his life to fall into ruin. The suspended electronic chords of the music, punctuated by sudden cries and crashes, create a tremulous atmosphere of fear and expectation.
In a crackle of of electronic sound and with a flash of light, the man emerges from a crouch, wearing a “plague mask,” the medieval doctors’ mask which looks like a raven’s head. The darting movements of his dance suggest he has become possessed by a spirit, some ancient, bird headed god from Egypt or Mesoamerica, a chaotic and liberating force of erotic or creative energy. The bird-man selects the Moon card from a tarot deck, the card of intuition and fear.
To the sound of a doleful march, like something a carnival band might play at a funeral, he dances with a bouquet of flowers, inside what looks like a bathroom in an abandoned school building. He tenderly offers the flowers to the air, as if offering his heart to a love that is doomed from the start.
Del Carpio’s visual compositions are haunting and precise. He creates an abundance of images that seem to speak on many levels at once, without shouting their meanings. The beautifully orchestrated rhythms of the music and the editing suspend us in a spooky poetic space, where the danger lies not so much in ghosts as in uncontrolled passions. Murray’s judicious use of lighting and editing effects and his restrained color palette beautifully enhance and support Del Carpio’s vision.
The film ends with an epigraph in which Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg defends the reality of his mystical experiences, hard as they might be for others to believe. The “confession” in the film appears to be this man’s direct experience of a disturbing and powerful spirit being, a bird-man who tempts him to sensual pleasures. This force is pagan, it is sexual, it is many things at once, and the man clings to Jesus for protection. But any single interpretation of the images in this film would be both misleading and unnecessary. The images all feel highly charged with the personal meaning they hold for Del Carpio, but he has skillfully arranged them so that they resonate with multiple, universal associations of human desire, guilt, and the longing for redemption. In the final image, the man lifts a veil from his face, gazing upwards. And by lifting a veil and allowing us to the images of his heart, Del Carpio offers us all a chance to look for redemption.
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