Dan Fainaru. Confession. Screen International.

Bleak, sparse tale reaps rich rewards

Confession

Un Certain Regard

This tortured tale of marital infidelity is the second part of Demirkubuz’s “Tales of Darkness”. Shot back to back with Fate (see review above), Confession was awarded the best Turkish Director prize and a Fipresci prize for best Turkish film at last month’s Istanbul film festival. It confirms, if it was needed, the director’s position as the great white hope of Turkish cinema these days. It may also, because of its more accessible subject, find a more receptive audience at home than his previous and rather forbidding entry.

Hero, as in Fate, Demirkubuz is obsessed with guilt and with characters whose lives are turned into hell by uncertainty and suspicion. Harun (Birsel), an engineer away on business in Istanbul, drops everything and returns in the middle of the night to his home in Ankara. There he finds that flat empty and his wife Nilgun (Koklukaya) whose solitude on the phone could not mask a tinge of coldness, absent. Tormented by doubts, Harun pretends to be a sleep when she comes home, and hears her talking on the phone with someone he believes is her lover.

From then the fear of betrayal takes hold and gradually drives him out of his mind. First using threats and physical coercion, he tries to squeeze a confession out of his wife in a nightmarish sequence which finally reveals their guilty consciences. It transpires that Harun took Nilgun away from his best friend, who then committed suicide when he found out, a death that lies heavy on both of them. Once the couple break up each tries to alone for the past but both fail piteously. When they again meet at the end, they may be sadder, but not necessarily wiser than before.

Very much in control of every aspect of his films, Demirkubuz has gone a step further here and taking over the camera as well as his usual responsibilities as director, producer, writer and editor. His distinctive cinematic style is evident in every shot as he successfully generates a feeling of anguished solitude by separating his protagonist as much as possible from the rest of the characters. He judiciously uses off-screen sound while leaving the screen itself empty, insisting on economy in every respect, be it in dialogue, sets or camera set-ups, sometimes even to the detriment of a plot that seems at times too skeletal for its own good. And there is no background music (with the exception of a few chords).

As for the open ending (one of the three that Demirkubuz shot before he could make up his mind), it seems perfectly attuned to Demirkubuz’s vision of life as a vale of tears where hope and misery are hard to separate. No wonder his next project, wrapping up his “Tales of Darkness” , will be an adaptation of Crime and Punishment.

Dan Fainaru. Screen International. 2002.