Nine Queens (2001)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Written by Fabián Bielinsky
Directed by Fabián Bielinsky
Starring Gastón Pauls, Ricardo Darín, Leticia Brédice, and Tomás Fonzi

Features:

• Theatrical trailer
  
• Spanish with English or French subtitles
  

Rating: R

Anamorphic: Yes

My Advice: Rent it.

Juan (Pauls) is a petty crook, a small-time swindler in Buenos Aires. When a cheap con goes wrong at a convenience store, it is only the intervention of Marcos (Darín) that keeps Juan from spending a few days in jail. Marcos, it seems, is a grifter, too--but on a scale barely considered by Juan--with years of experience taking cash from clerks, old ladies, priests, waiters, and anybody else he can manage to rip off. He offers to team up with Juan for the day, just to show him some things that might prove useful, and so that Juan's innocent face can help the two of them get away with even more outrageous deceptions. Juan tentatively agrees to the partnership, with no idea how far the day will take him.

Marcos gets the opporunity to pull the swindle of a lifetime, conning an incredibly wealthy collector out of a fortune for a set of counterfeit stamps, a fake of the legendary "Nine Queens." But the con has to happen fast. The buyer is only in town for a day, and the man responsible for the forgery wants his cash pronto. This complicates matters a bit, as the collector is staying in a hotel where Marcos' estranged sister Valeria (Brédice) is an employee. She's a ball-buster, eager for any excuse to call the cops and have Marcos dragged off of the premises, and it's only the presence of Juan that keeps this animosity from erupting into a full-on fight. As it stands, the battle of wills adds yet another layer of stress to an already dangerously touchy situation. These complications accelerate the plot to a stunning conclusion, an instant classic in the vein of House of Games.

Nine Queens is a tense, terse film, too vibrant and tropical to really be noir, but with all the same sensibilities that make a film in that genre sing. The dialogue is slick, polished, and eminently entertaining (at least in translation...I'm assuming the original is as good or better). All the leads pull their roles off admirably, and the chemistry between Pauls and Darín is the stuff screen legends are made of. The film has a running subtext about the nature of the "game" that Juan and Marcos are playing, and what sort of individual it takes to be successful in that world. Juan must evaluate himself and decide if he really has what it takes to elevate his con game to the next stage, or if he's going to play small-time grifter for the rest of his life (or even, perhaps, return to the straight and narrow).

The DVD treatment is a little bit thin, but no more so than most foreign language films that get handled by a big studio. It's a real shame that most studios don't seem to take their foreign product seriously enough to treat it well. This film is an excellent work, something that could have benefited from some interviews, or commentary, or qualified-specialist comparisons to things like the works of David Mamet or the original The Sting. There's a lot of room to make some interesting notes about the film with some special features, but nobody could be bothered, so all you get is a trailer and your choice of subtitles.

Despite the lackluster DVD treatment, this one is definitely worth renting, and if the movie grabs you like it did me, then it might be worth picking up a copy for keeps.