Institute History
Description
Married for twenty-five years, Santiago, a timid civil servant, and Josefina, his upstanding wife, have settled into an ordinary coexistence in their urban apartment in Bogotá, Colombia. But on April 9, 1948, the popular Liberal party presidential candidate, Jorge Gaitán, is assassinated, igniting a bloody civil war. Despite the turmoil outside, Josefina bakes a cake for her neighbor Laura’s fortieth birthday and sends her husband to deliver it. With loyalists to Gaitán taking rooftop positions, and the army massing below, Santiago and Laura are trapped together in her small apartment in full view of Josefina across the street. Against this backdrop of Colombia’s most tumultuous period, Santiago and Laura discover one other. Their brief moment of intimacy illuminates their common existence, and they reveal themselves as they would like to be. It is the discrepancy in Cardona’s deft script between the hell that is transpiring outside and the unexpected communication going on inside that provides the film’s gentle humor. Confession to Laura is a masterfully intimate portrait of two people in which director Jaime Osorio cleverly takes advantage of every corner of very cramped quarters.