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Beguiling and unpredictable, Cannes Un Certain Regard breakout The Delinquents reinvents the heist film as a free-flowing adventure like no other.
Buenos Aires bank employee Morán dreams up a scheme to liberate himself from corporate monotony: he'll steal enough money to support a modest retirement, then confess and serve prison time while his co-worker holds on to the cash. Soon under pressure by a company investigator, accomplice Román heads to a remote rural idyll to hide the funds. There, he encounters a mysterious woman who will transform his life forever.
The Garden Cinema View:
The Delinquents is a tensionless heist featuring two uncharismatic leads who chose three years of jail over a lifetime of corporate drudgery.
Using this premise, Rodrigo Moreno masterfully sets up expectations (of a satire, a moral fable, or a character study), which he then subverts by taking a left at every turn.
If it's a heist, it's the most anticlimactic in cinema history, if it's a character study, then it's subjects are extremely dull, and if it's a moral fable, then why are the events so random?
What The Delinquents without a doubt is, is a spot-on satire on corporatism, a meditation on freedom featuring a plot that strays into wonderfully ‘silly’ territory.
There is fun to be had with this playful mess of genres, while following the protagonists’ random wonderings and moral dilemmas. Mysterious and eccentric, and laced with deadpan humour, The Delinquents stands as one of the best recent films out of Argentina.
Cast:
Daniel Elías, Esteban Bigliardi, Margarita Molfino