Nine Queens

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Nine Queens
9reinasposter.jpg
Theatrical release poster
SpanishNueve reinas
Directed byFabián Bielinsky
Written byFabián Bielinsky
Produced byCecilia Bossi
Pablo Bossi
StarringRicardo Darín
Gastón Pauls
Leticia Brédice
Tomás Fonzi
CinematographyMarcelo Camorino
Edited bySergio Zottola
Music byCésar Lerner
Distributed byBuena Vista International
Release date
  • August 31, 2000 (2000-08-31) (Argentina)
Running time
114 minutes
CountryArgentina
LanguageSpanish
Budget$1,300,000[1]
Box office$12,413,888[2]

Nine Queens (Spanish: Nueve reinas) is a 2000 Argentinian crime drama film written and directed by Fabián Bielinsky and starring Ricardo Darín, Gastón Pauls, Leticia Brédice, Tomás Fonzi and Alejandro Awada.[3]

The story centers on two con artists who meet and decide to cooperate in a major scam. The film was nominated for 28 awards and won 21 of them, and is now considered a classic in Argentinian film history.

Plot[]

At a convenience store early in the morning, Juan (Gastón Pauls), a con artist, successfully scams one cashier, but he is caught when he attempts the same scam on a different cashier at the same store. Marcos (Ricardo Darín), who has been observing Juan, pretends to be a police officer and takes Juan away. Once they are far enough from the store, Marcos reveals he is a fellow con man whose partner has recently disappeared. He asks Juan to try out being his partner for the day, an arrangement to which Juan agrees because his father, who is also a con man, is in jail and needs to raise $70,000 quickly in order to bribe a judge.

Later that day, the chance to take part in an elaborate and potentially lucrative scheme arises when Sandler (Oscar Nuñez), a former business associate of Marcos, contacts Marcos to ask for help selling a counterfeit sheet of some rare stamps that he made (the "nine queens" of the title). The potential mark is Gandolfo (Ignasi Abadal), a rich, corrupt, stamp-collecting Spaniard who is staying at the hotel where Marcos' sister Valeria (Leticia Brédice) happens to work while he waits to be deported the next day. Since there is insufficient time to properly check if the stamps are authentic, Gandolfo hires an expert (Leo Dyzen) to come to his room and do a quick check, and he is satisfied by the confirmation he receives. He offers $450,000 for the stamps, with the exchange to take place that evening. Outside of the hotel, the stamp expert says he knew the stamps were forged and demands Juan and Marcos pay him for saying they were genuine. The fake stamps are then stolen out of Juan and Marcos' hands by thieves on a motorcycle who, unaware of their value, toss them into a river.

To salvage the scheme, Marcos and Juan approach Sandler's widowed sister Berta (Elsa Berenguer), as she is the owner of the real stamps, which she agrees to sell for $250,000. Marcos says he can put up $200,000 and asks Juan to contribute the remaining $50,000. The fact that Marcos needs the exact amount of money he knows Juan has been able to save so far to help his father (Ricardo Díaz Mourelle) makes Juan suspicious, but, after visiting his father in jail, he ultimately agrees to the arrangement.

Marcos and Juan buy the real stamps and go back to the hotel, where, after finding out that Valeria is Marcos' sister, Gandolfo says he has changed his mind and will now only buy the stamps if he also gets to sleep with Valeria. She says her price for doing so is that Marcos must confess to their younger brother Federico (Tomás Fonzi) that Marcos cheated both Valeria and him out of their family inheritance. After he does so, Valeria spends the night with Gandolfo, who pays for the stamps with a certified check the next morning. Juan and Marcos rush to the bank, only to see a crowd outside and learn the bank has crashed due to fraud by the management, making the check worthless. Juan, looking disillusioned, walks away, while Marcos sticks around to see if he can find a way to still get the money.

In the final scene, Juan arrives at a warehouse, where he greets the motorcycle thieves, Gandolfo, Sandler, Berta, and Valeria, who is Juan's girlfriend – revealing that the real con was to swindle Marcos out of $200,000 as revenge for all the times he cheated his family and his partners.

Cast[]

  • Gastón Pauls as Juan
  • Ricardo Darín as Marcos
  • Leticia Brédice as Valeria
  • Ignasi Abadal as 'Vidal Gandolfo'
    • Claudio Rissi as the real voice of 'Vidal Gandolfo'
  • Tomás Fonzi as Federico
  • Elsa Berenguer as Berta
  • Oscar Núñez as Sandler
  • Celia Juárez as Mrs. Sandler
  • Antonio Ugo as D'Agostino
  • Jorge Noya as Anibal
  • Alejandro Awada as Washington
  • Roberto Rey as Texan
  • Leo Dyzen as stamp expert
  • Ricardo Díaz Mourelle as Ramiro

Background[]

The main character of the film is trying to remember the tune of a Rita Pavone song throughout the film. The song, "Il Ballo del Mattone", plays as the end credits run.

Distribution[]

The film opened wide in Argentina on August 31, 2000. The film was screened at various film festivals, including: the Telluride Film Festival, United States; the Toronto International Film Festival, Canada; the Medellín de Película, Colombia; the Portland International Film Festival, United States; the Cognac Festival du Film Policier, France; the München 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.

Remakes[]

The film's screenplay was adapted for the 2004 American film Criminal. It was also used as a basis for three Indian films: the Bollywood film Bluffmaster! (2005), the Malayalam film Gulumal (2009) and the Telugu film All the Best (2012).

Critical reception[]

Nine Queens garnered mostly positive reviews from film critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 92% approval rating based on 95 reviews, with an average rating of 7.45/10. The site's consensus reads: "Deliciously twist-filled, Nine Queens is a clever and satisfying crime caper."[4] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 80/100 based on 30 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[5]

Roger Ebert, in his review of Nine Queens for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film a score of three out of four stars, commending its screenplay and calling the film "an elegant and sly deadpan comedy."[6] Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune awarded the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, and called it "One of the most clever, most enjoyable thrillers in years."[7] Orlando Sentinel film critic Roger Moore gave the film four stars out of five, writing, "the laughs are dark, the puzzle steadily more engrossing and the surprises, just like Heist, are doozies, up to the finale."[8] Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle also gave the film a positive review, writing: "Fast-paced and unerringly surprising, Nine Queens is nicely performed by a large cast [...] 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."[9]

Geoff Pevere of The Toronto Star wrote in his review of the film: "If Nine Queens draws you on a journey that eventually leads up a garden path toward your own suckerhood, it's all the more pleasurable for having done so with such slick expertise."[4] BBC film critic Tom Dawson called the film "a welcome addition to the genre" and a "taut thriller a powerful allegorical resonance."[10]

Awards[]

Wins

  • Argentine Film Critics Association Awards: Silver Condor; Best Actor, Ricardo Darín; Best Cinematography, Marcelo Camorino; Best Director, Fabián Bielinsky; Best Editing, Sergio Zottola; Best Film; Best Original Screenplay, Fabián Bielinsky; Best Supporting Actress, Elsa Berenguer; 2001.
  • Biarritz International Festival of Latin American Cinema: Best Actor, (tie) Ricardo Darín and Gastón Pauls; for Nueve reinas; 2001.
  • Bogotá Film Festival: Audience Award, Fabián Bielinsky; Golden Precolumbian Circle, Best Director, Fabián Bielinsky; 2001.
  • Lima Latin American Film Festival: Elcine First Prize, Fabián Bielinsky; 2001.
  • Lleida Latin-American Film Festival: Audience Award, Fabián Bielinsky; Best Director, Fabián Bielinsky; 2001.
  • Oslo Films from the South Festival: Audience Award, Fabián Bielinsky; 2001.
  • Cognac Festival du Film Policier: Grand Prix, Fabián Bielinsky; Premiere Award, Fabián Bielinsky; 2002.
  • Fantasporto: Directors' Week Award, Best Screenplay, Fabián Bielinsky; 2002.
  • Portland International Film Festival: Audience Award Best First Film, Fabián Bielinsky; 2002.
  • Sant Jordi Awards: Best Foreign Actor, Ricardo Darín. Also for La Fuga (2001) and El Hijo de la Novia (2001); 2002.

References[]

  1. ^ Presented as a metaphor of Argentina, "Nine Queens" is released in New York Diario Clarín, 10-04-2002 (in Spanish)
  2. ^ Nine Queens Box Office Mojo
  3. ^ Nueve reinas at IMDb.
  4. ^ a b "Nine Queens (Nueve reinas) (2001)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved July 11, 2020.
  5. ^ "Nine Queens". Metacritic. Retrieved October 20, 2013.
  6. ^ Ebert, Roger (May 10, 2002). "Nine Queens movie review & film summary (2002)". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved July 11, 2020.
  7. ^ Wilmington, Michael (May 10, 2002). "'Nine Queens' an ingenious thriller". Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Illinois. Retrieved July 11, 2020.
  8. ^ Moore, Roger (July 12, 2002). "For grifters, it's all a game". Orlando Sentinel. Orlando, Florida. Retrieved July 11, 2020.
  9. ^ Guthmann, Edward (April 26, 2000). "Film Clips / Also opening today: 'Nine Queens'". SFGate. Retrieved March 10, 2007.
  10. ^ Dawson, Tom (July 2, 2002). "Nine Queens (Nueve Reinas) (2002)". BBC. Archived from the original on December 21, 2019. Retrieved July 11, 2020.

External links[]

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