May 2- 8, 2002
movies
Con Man
 TOPSY-TURVY: Ricardo Darón and Gastón Pauls in Nine Queens.  |
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Fabián Bielinsky on the treacherous Nine Queens.
Fabián Bielinsky, whose Nine Queens opens theatrically this Friday, made his first film in 1972, at the age of 13, while a member of the newly instituted student film group at the Buenos Aires National High School. He was selected by the teacher, he says, not because he was “better” than his fellow students, but because he was “so passionate.” And he was instantly hooked. “I know,” he smiles, “that some people do this because of possible results, money or fame. But that’s not my particular case. I can remember the feeling of being in the theater: It was The Moment. I still have this feeling, this nice warm feeling, a vibration, when I see the logos of the studios, the mountain or the lion.” Bielinsky went on to work as an assistant director on some 400 commercials and several feature films, and also taught classes in cinematographic production and film analysis. He took up writing and directing, he recalls, because he was bored as an AD, and wanted to recover “the excitement.”
Nine Queens, Bielinsky says, is a film about pleasure, not only for him and his crew, but also for viewers. It combines elements of the con man film and the buddy film in order to twist conventions. "This film is about manipulation," he says. "My own thinking in writing it was to [manipulate] the audience, emotion-wise, information-wise, and identification-wise. I wanted to let people think they could think ahead, and then contradict that. And I had the advantage, which is that most of the films today are so predictable, that it's very easy to fool somebody."
During production, Bielinsky worked closely with cinematographer Marcelo Camorino (he recalls that they would break down shots over beers after work). The director wanted to establish his characters, who exist in a highly "artificial" narrative, "perfectly driven and drawn," in very "realistic" settings. "I really thought about this," he says, "the relationship between these guys and their surroundings. Them and the street, them and the hotel."
On the street, as Marcos (Ricardo Darín) points out during the film, the two swindlers are in their "element," amid a crowd of potential con artists. "It was a comfortable relationship," he says. "They live there, the street is supporting them and protecting them, it is water for fish." And to achieve this effect, he "tried to blend them into the scene. Whenever I could, I used hidden cameras, in trucks across the street, working with the long lens."
In the swank hotel where Juan (Gastón Pauls) and Marcos hope to make the score of their lives -- selling a sheet of rare stamps called the Nine Queens -- they feel uncomfortable. "They know that someone is looking over them all the time, the security people or the [guests]." And so, the camera shoots them in closer shots, revealing the ways they feel conspicuous.
This sense of strain is most clearly evoked, for Bielinsky, in the relationship between Marcos and his sister Valeria (Leticia Bredice), who works at the hotel. Bielinsky says that his "only regret" about the sibling relationship is "that I had to give a lot of information to make this puzzle understandable for the audience. I had to emphasize a lot of things about how Marcos cheated his family, background that took us out of the immediate present." The writer prefers to leave such details hazy, allowing viewers to discover connections on their own.
In order to narrow the focus as much as possible, the film takes place during "just 24 hours or so in the life of these guys. I knew that before I knew the story. I wanted to do it in one day, no more. It sounds like a limitation, but it's a challenge. It allows the audience to interpret what went on in the rest of their lives."
Bielinsky also appreciates the fact that his characters are all lying -- to one another, to the audience, and even to themselves. "It is a tricky game," he laughs. "As I thought about it, I wasn't adding information or stories, but multiplying. It's like a card game: I show you, I don't show you."
Bielinsky hopes to keep playing the movie-making game, for now. Because of his movie's success, he observes, "I have this privilege, and I can have financing from the United States, or Europe, or Spain. But I don't have to step into Hollywood. I learned that there's a relationship between the amount of money they invest and the amount of control they want to take over your film. So the less money, the less control. I'm not interested in big, I'm interested in pleasure."
Nine Queens opens Friday at Ritz Five. See Sam Adams’ review on p. 34.
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