Playing a morose taxidermist who fantasises about pulling off the perfect heist, his character Espinosa is no Norman Bates but shares the same eerie presence.

When a recluse real-life criminal dies in a hunting accident, Espinosa gets a chance not so much to assume his identity as take his place in a casino heist he had been planning with accomplices who have never met him, using his photographic memory to convince them. Bielinsky lets the story unravel visually, setting up situations where, like Espinosa, you only know what's going on by watching closely and putting two and two together.

The brilliance of The Aura (which gets its title from what Espinosa describes as that moment before one of his epileptic fits "when you realise it's going to come but during those few seconds you're free, there is no choice, nothing for you to decide, and you surrender yourself") is encapsulated in one extraordinary scene . . . reminiscent of Antonioni . . . in which Espinosa watches from a distance a shootout in which neither he nor the audience have any idea what is going on or why, but are transfixed almost as in a dream.

Viva! continues all week, closing on Sunday with Viggo Mortensen in Alatriste, a 17th-century swashbuckler about corrupt corruption during the decline of the Spanish empire.