Gregory Nava’s debut feature, The Confessions of Aman, written in 1973 but not released until 1977, was made in Spain for the “non-budget” of $20,000, using props and costumes left over from Samuel Bronson’s epic, El Cid.
A neo-Bressonian medieval romance, Confessions of Aman tells the tragic love affair of a young philosophy tutor and a lord’s wife. Like Bresson, Nava is less interested in the affair than in the moral choices the protagonists are forced to make. The film is observed from a distance, a detached perspective that Nava abandoned as his career progressed.
