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Nine Queens (film)
Nine Queens (2000) is a Argentine crime drama film written and directed by Fabian Bielinsky. The picture features Gaston Pauls, Ricardo Darin, Leticia Bredice, Tomas Fonzi, among others.
The film was nominated for twenty-eight awards and won twenty-one of them.
It tells the story of two con artists who meet by chance and decide to cooperate in a scam.
Plot
Two con men, Marcos and Juan meet, apparently by chance, in a gas station mini-market, early in the morning. Juan attempts to scam the cashier, but makes a mistake when he comes back to pull the same scam on the next shift, too.
Marcos, who has been observing this the whole time, steps in pretending to be a police officer, and takes Juan away. As soon as they are far enough from the shop, Marcos tells Juan he is not a cop but a fellow con man. Juan asks Marcos to show him the ropes, because, Juan tells us, his father was a con man, too, but he got locked up in jail for trying to swindle somebody. Juan tells Marcos that he needs the money, because there is a certain judge that accepts bribes and if the money is right, his dad can be released within 6 months, instead of serving 10 years.
Then a once-in-a-lifetime scheme seemingly falls into their laps: the sale of some rare forged stamps, called "The Nine Queens", to a rich Spaniard who is leaving the country the next morning and therefore is unable to check if the stamps are legitimate.
The plot thickens when Marcos' sister, Marcos' younger brother and various thieves, con men and pickpockets -- old friends of Juan's father -- get involved, and the forged stamps get stolen.
At the end, the film makes a dramatic plot change by showing that all the operation was a scam made by Juan.
Cast
Gaston Pauls as Juan
Ricardo Darin as Marcos
Leticia Bredice as Valeria
Tomas Fonzi as Federico
Graciela Tenenbaum as Convenience Store Employee
Maria Mercedes Villagra as Convenience Store Employee 2
Gabriel Correa as Convenience Store Manager
Pochi Ducasse as Aunt
Luis Armesto as Bar Waiter
Ernesto Arias as Bar Manager
Amancay Espindola as Woman in Elevator
Isaac Fajm as Vendor
Jorge Noya as Anibal
Oscar Nunez as Sandler
Ignasi Abadal as Vidal Gandolfo
Carlos Lanari as Man on Cell Phone
Alejandro Awada as Washington
Distribution
The film opened wide in Argentina on August 31, 2000. The film was screened at various film festivals, including: the Telluride Film Festival, USA; the Toronto Film Festival, Canada; the Medellin de Pelicula, Colombia; the Portland International Film Festival, United States; the Cognac Festival du Film Policier, France; the Munchen Fantasy Filmfest, Germany; the Norwegian International Film Festival, Norway; and others.
In the United States it opened on a limited basis on April 19, 2002.
Critical reception
FIlm critic Roger Ebert liked the screenplay of the film, and wrote, "And on and on, around and around, in an elegant and sly deadpan comedy. A plot, however clever, is only the clockwork; what matters is what kind of time a movie tells. Nine Queens is blessed with a gallery of well-drawn character roles, including the alcoholic mark and his two bodyguards; the avaricious widow who owns the "nine queens" and her much younger bleached-blond boyfriend, and Valeria the sister, who opposes Marcos' seamy friends and life of crime but might be willing to sleep with Gandolfo if she can share in the spoils." Ebert, Roger. Chicago Sun Times, film festival, May 10, 2002.
The San Francisco Chronicle film critic, Edward Guthmann, also reviewed the film positively and thought the actors performed quite well, writing, "Fast-paced and unerringly surprising, Nine Queens is nicely performed by a large cast, particularly Darin (El hijo de la novia) as a goateed, less-than- perfect hoodwinker. David Mamet plowed this con-the-con turf in Heist, House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner, but Bielinsky, in his directing debut, makes it seem sassy and reinvented." Guthmann, Edward. The San Francisco Chronicle, film review, April 26, 2002.
Awards
Wins
Argentine Film Critics Association Awards: Silver Condor; Best Actor, Ricardo Darin; Best Cinematography, Marcelo Camorino; Best Director, Fabian Bielinsky; Best Editing, Sergio Zottola; Best Film; Best Original Screenplay, Fabian Bielinsky; Best Supporting Actress, Elsa Berenguer; 2001.
Biarritz International Festival of Latin American Cinema: Best Actor, (tie) Ricardo Darin and Gaston Pauls; for Nueve reinas; 2001.
Bogota Film Festival: Audience Award, Fabian Bielinsky; Golden Precolumbian Circle, Best Director, Fabian Bielinsky; 2001.
Lima Latin American Film Festival: Elcine First Prize, Fabian Bielinsky; 2001.
Lleida Latin-American Film Festival: Audience Award, Fabian Bielinsky; Best Director, Fabian Bielinsky; 2001.
Oslo Films from the South Festival: Audience Award, Fabian Bielinsky; 2001.
Cognac Festival du Film Policier: Grand Prix, Fabian Bielinsky; Premiere Award, Fabian Bielinsky; 2002.
Fantasporto: Directors' Week Award, Best Screenplay, Fabian Bielinsky; 2002.
Portland International Film Festival: Audience Award Best First Film, Fabian Bielinsky; 2002.
Sant Jordi Awards: Sant Jordi; Best Foreign Actor, Ricardo Darin. Also for La Fuga (2001) and El Hijo de la Novia (2001); 2002.
Adaptations
The film was the basis for the 2004 American remake Criminal, directed by Gregory Jacobs, starring John C. Reilly and Diego Luna.
The film inspired the 2005 Indian remake Bluffmaster, directed by Rohan Sippy, starring Abhishek Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra and Ritesh Deshmukh.
External links
Nueve reinas at the cinenacional.com .
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Nine Queens (film)
