Review: The Delinquents (Los delincuentes) (2023)
Giving in to temptation, a bank manager defects
The Delinquents (Los delincuentes) (2023)
Directed by Rodrigo Moreno
An alluring pastorale. An existential investigation. A bank heist comedy.
This three-hour film, marketed in the U.S. as the latter, is all three of those. It joins this year’s “Trenque Lauquen” as another recent release in New Argentine Cinema. Both movies are long and in two parts, and they employ at least one major actor in common.
Both “Trenque Lauquen” and "The Delinquents" (original title Los Deliquentes) include elements of playfulness and misdirection that serve to undermine the centrality of narrative and instead center the movie in a timeless state where experience and pleasure are ascendant. And both are worth every minute of your time.
“The Delinquents” begins with Morán (Daniel Elías), treasurer at a Buenos Aires bank. Taking advantage of a co-worker’s absence, he descends to the vault and packs bundle after bundle of cash into a duffel bag. He carries it away at the end of the day, and later meets his colleague Román (Esteban Bigliardi) at a bar. “Look at the floor,” he says, kicking the bag between Román’s feet. “There’s $650,000 there. I want you to keep it for me.”
Morán explains that when he gets out of prison they’ll split the dough, which amounts to their total salaries for the next 25 years if they stay at the bank. They'd never have to work again. Does Román want to work for another 25 years, he asks, or does he want to be totally free of work in less than four? Román has qualms, but agrees.
The bank’s head is furious about the robbery. All of the staff are under suspicion, even if Morán was the sole perpetrator. The investigation is headed by a merciless auditor named Ortega (Laura Paredes, star of “Trenque Lauquen”) whose approach is without subtlety. Her first question to Román (the one who is quite literally holding the bag) is “So, you were aware of Mr. Morán’s plans?”
Román is so freaked out that he visits Morán in prison and says he can’t hold the bag any longer. Morán instructs him to travel to a distant province, hike through a forest, and hide the money in a certain rock outcropping. This is the same provincial location Morán visited between the robbery and turning himself in.
Here comes the pastorale. Román travels to Córdoba and hides the bag full of cash. A few minutes later, he runs into a sybaritic trio picnicking beside a gently flowing river. They urge him to stay and have lunch; he spends the day with them swimming, eating, and drinking wine. One of the women, Norma (Margarita Molfino), develops a thing for the visitor and asks him to stay the night with her, but Román has to go back to the city and his job at the bank. He departs, and for the first kilometer, Norma keeps pace with his bus on a motorbike, and grins at him through the window — a scene that made me think of one in a Wim Wenders film1 — then he leaves behind the edenic countryside.
The allure of freedom — the gestalt of the long day of relaxing and playing in the river, the enticement of the beautiful young woman — takes over the movie. Morán’s proposal, that half of the booty means you’d never have to work again, has taken literal shape in the form of a family of choice in the country, far from the bank and its tensions. Along with the unforgettable Margarita Molfino, whose shining face remains with the viewer long after the film ends, the vision of the gorgeous countryside and the prospect of a life free from drudgery are indeed tempting. Almost enough so to make three and a half years in prison seem worth it. (To the film’s credit, Morán’s time behind bars is properly presented as being dreary, humiliating, and dangerous.)
To be sure, the bucolic paradise presented by the film is via the male gaze. Each of the men, Morán and Román, meet the same Norma and she willingly takes each as a lover. Each imagines himself in this alternative life, where Norma’s arms and lips always admit them.
The story involving the bank robbery fades into these dreams; the heist, and whether Román’s involvement will be discovered, no longer seem to be of importance. Perhaps if a woman had made this film, the robbery plot would have been smaller from the beginning, the comic character of Marianela (Mariana Chaud) — of all the bank staff, she seems to have the best boundaries and to be the conscience of the place — more prominent. Perhaps the second half wouldn’t have been so focused on whether one of the men would wind up with the cute girl.
As it is — and this is the most important thing — the movie’s open subversion of the heist genre overturns the viewer’s expectations, depositing its viewers in the middle of a dream.
And this is an exceptionally generous thing for a film to do. You thought you wanted that? What about this — isn’t it so much better? More beautiful?
A famous scene in Wenders’ “Falsche Bewegung” shows the main character watching as a lovely woman boards an adjacent train, then smiles at him from its window as the two trains run parallel and then gradually pull away from each other: