The Confession

Harun is certain his wife Nilgün is with someone else. Being certain, he asks; because he asks, he gets no answer; and getting no answer, he asks more. One evening they sit down at the table and he demands a confession. She does not speak. Then she does, and what she says is not what he prepared for. The subject is not adultery but what a man who wants to know actually wants. Harun asks not to learn the truth but to have the story he has built confirmed, and when the confession comes he does not know what to do with it. The form is bare. In most scenes the camera does not move at all, the light is the house's own, and the conversations run in long single takes. Zeki Demirkubuz brings in no technical help that would rescue an actor, which is what makes the scenes genuinely uncomfortable. It is one of the two films the director grouped under the title Tales About Darkness; the other is Fate. Both were shot in the same period and screened together at Cannes in 2002 in Un Certain Regard. Taner Birsel plays Harun and Başak Köklükaya plays Nilgün, with İskender Altın in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like Demirkubuz's cinema and relationship drama in a single space. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace; the film is deliberately slow and offers the viewer no relief.