TIFF 2010: Confessions

Confessions kicks off with an extended monologue given by a schoolteacher whose daughter has drowned in a swimming pool. She gradually and coldly reveals that students in her class are responsible for her child’s death. The students act like typical apathetic teenagers, laughing and texting through the whole thing. As I was watching this, I wondered where the film was going to lead. Would it keep the structure of the opening sequence and have the teacher tell the story in flashback? Or would it switch to a more conventional route and show the consequences of the girl’s death? As it turns out, I could never have guessed where it was going to go.

If serialized TV series can be likened to novels, and movies are analogous to short stories, then Confessions is like poetry. It never adheres to a linear narrative, instead jumping between chapters that play like psychological profiles of the various characters in the film. At the same time, the plot reveals itself one fragment at a time, until a clear picture forms of the twisted schemes of the teacher and her students. There are no innocent characters in this film; everyone is motivated by some dark internal forces.

I admit that during the more abstract sections of Confessions, I tuned out slightly; being accustomed to more structured narratives, I found it hard to pay attention when it didn’t feel like the plot was being advanced in some way. However, I realized afterwards that those scenes would pop back into my memory, and it was because the visuals that they present would draw parallels to more significant scenes in other parts of the movie. For example, there is an image that sticks in my head of the students splashing through rain puddles in slow-motion. On its own, you might call it pointless, but later on, the schoolteacher character experiences a cathartic moment in a scene that has a similar visual palette.

Generally, I subscribe to the idea that the more you remember and contemplate a movie after watching it, the better it is. In that sense, Confessions was the best movie I saw at TIFF this year, because it was with me for days, and I’m really looking forward to seeing it again.

4.5 out of 5

N.B. I don’t automatically like a movie just because it has a Radiohead song in it. To avoid accusations of same, I hereby relegate to a footnote the brilliant use of the song “Last Flowers” in a couple of key scenes of this movie. That is all.