The Delinquents
Rodrigo Moreno’s Argentinian heist drama both entertains and bores.
This film from Argentina is the work of Rodrigo Moreno a writer/director not previously known to me and it's a very odd piece indeed. I must acknowledge at the outset that it has won awards but it feels to me to be a film in conflict with itself. On the one hand it wants to be an engaging off-beat heist movie with popular appeal and this it does very successfully for what is presented as Part I. But on the other hand, what follows in Part II takes the film more and more into the world of Argentinian arthouse cinema of the challenging kind recently represented by Laura Citarella’s Trenque Lauquen. I found this mix deeply unsatisfying and all the more so because this film lasts for over three hours. Nor is it a case of the pleasurable and the disappointing sections balancing out because Part II is the longer by more than half an hour.
That said, Part I of The Delinquents is very engaging. Even here there is a blend of contrasted elements but in this context they are balanced effectively. We are in Buenos Aires and the story that slowly but intriguingly unfolds concerns a long-serving and trusted bank teller named Morán (Daniel Elías) who has quietly concocted a plan to rob the bank and to bring pressure on a fellow employee, Román (Esteban Bigliardi), to make him assist in the scheme. Instead of making this tale tense and dramatic, Moreno emphasises the humour in the situation as two reliable and seemingly respectable men turn criminal. In all this one detects a distant echo of the classic Ealing comedy The Lavender Hill Mob and part of the fun is in discovering how Morán has embraced the notion that a term of imprisonment followed by the opportunity to utilise the stolen money is far more desirable then slaving away at his job up to retirement age.
If that is Morán's game, Moreno’s is to add touches that suggest an underlying theme about the extent to which people are alike and interchangeable. Many reviewers have pointed out the use of names that echo each other: that starts with Morán and Román and they will later be joined by a filmmaker named Ramón (Javier Zoro) while two sisters who appear in Part II are Norma (Margarita Molfino) and Morna (Cecilia Rainero). Having learnt of this in advance I paid extra note to an early scene that might otherwise have seemed irrelevant. Here we see a bank customer (Adriana Aizemberg) having problems when it turns out that her signature is identical with that recorded by the bank as belonging to another account holder. A parallel of a rather different kind crops up when the actor Germán De Silva who plays the bank manager reappears in the role of Garrincha who is a gang boss in a prison. All these details are effective as playful decorations added to the story of the heist which is itself enlivened by the film’s sheer watchability – it's not just that Elías and Bigliardi are well cast but that Moreno’s direction aided by the editing and the camera movement is so well judged. The chosen mode may lack the tension of a standard heist thriller but the approach adopted results in a film handled in a way that plays on our curiosity and keeps us fully engaged.
But that is Part I. Part II may continue the tale but in effect it turns into a love story. That might be fine but for the fact that what begins with Román in Córdoba meeting Norma becomes for a time a rural idyll that feels overextended and uninvolving. What we see in no way persuades us that Román might indeed have found his Eden in this paradise. Next Román returns to Bueno Aires and Norma, improbably as presented here, follows him. In any case at this stage the way in which characters echo one another becomes no longer a fringe decoration but is woven directly into the narrative itself, partly by way of a flashback containing a delayed revelation. Unfortunately, what happens now seems like a scriptwriter’s contrivance rather than anything believable and the main characters become puppets whose behaviour and emotions are manipulated by the writer thus preventing us from caring about them. There are admittedly passing pleasures including Moreno’s very varied use of music by notable composers among them Piazzolla, Poulenc, Bach and Saint-Saëns but, whereas in Trenque Lauquen Citarella’s directorial skills helped to hold the viewer even when the writing became much less effective, Moreno fails to do that and leaves us (or me at least) feeling bored and let down.
Late in the film a poem by the late Ricardo Zelarayán entitled ‘The Great Salt Flats’ is given special emphasis and this suggests that The Delinquents, having already moved from being a heist tale to a love story, is now seeking to turn into a philosophical work with Zelarayán’s words as its key. His piece may indeed be great poetry if read quietly and pondered on by the reader, but if heard here for the first time in spoken extract form it is certainly not easily grasped. It may point to the significance of small things in life that can so easily pass one by but which are nevertheless wrapped in mystery. But whatever one makes of it, the poem hardly provides a clear perspective enabling one to appreciate exactly what Moreno’s purpose was in telling this story. Unlike those who have praised The Delinquents my own appreciation of it is entirely limited to its first part: that is highly original and entertaining and shows how good a director Moreno can be, but the rest of his film is to my mind a write-off.
Original title: Los delincuentes.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Daniel Elías, Esteban Bogliatdi. Magarita Molfino, Germán De Silva, Mariona Chaud, Laura Parades, Gabriela Saison, Javier Zoro, Cecilia Raonero, Lalo Rotaveria, Franco de la Puente, Iair Said, Adriana Aizemberg.
Dir Rodrigo Moreno, Pro Ezequiel Borovinsky, Screenplay Rodrigo Moreno, Ph Alejo Maglio and Ines Duacastella, Art Dir Gonzalo Delgado and Laura Caligiuri, Ed Manuel Ferrari, Nicolas Goldbart and Rodrigo Moreno, Costumes Flora Caligiuri.
Rizoma Films/Wanka Cine/Jaque Content/Les Films Fauves/ Jirafa Films-Mubi.
190 mins. Argentina/Luxembourg/Brazil/Germany/Mexico/Italy/Chile/USA. 2023. UK Rel: 22 March 2024. Cert. 12A.
