Los delincuentes

In 1949, Hugo Fregonese’s APENAS UN DELINCUENTE envisaged a legal shortcut to avert the suffering of a company employee: to obtain the same amount of money he would earn by working until retirement, he runs a scam and hides the money so he can enjoy it later, after serving no more than three years behind bars. More than seven decades later, Rodrigo Moreno returns to the same plot, but adds some happy variations: protagonist Morán is not alone, he has a partner, Román; instead of a company they rob a bank; the decadent climate of film noir is dispensed with; and the characters set off on a journey of self-discovery in which they will find out that money is not the necessary condition for what they are looking for and they might end up experiencing freedom instead. There are romances, journeys, relevant film references and plot twists. The skill with which Moreno films the city of Buenos Aires is as admirable as the prose that supports the story, capable of moving back and forth with the same elegance with which an erotic scene is resolved. Leisure is the great theme of all of Moreno’s cinema, and here he affirms more than ever that this way of taking care of time can’t be measured according to the laws of the kingdom of money. (Roger Koza)

Rodrigo Moreno: NOSOTROS (1993, K), MALA ÉPOCA (1998, KO-REGIE), EL DESCANSO (2002, KO-REGIE), EL CUSTODIO (2006), UN MUNDO MISTERIOSO (2011), RÉIMON (2012)