|
|
NINE QUEENS (Green as counterfeit money)
|
Con-game movies unfailingly observe a curious stylized orthodoxy of opening. Young naïf aspirant fumblingly executes the con before the knowing eyes of seasoned pro. They bond, the pro recruits. There is a Big Score coming, does the youngster want in?
GAMBIT, 1966
THE STING, 1973
THE COLOR OF MONEY, 1986
DIRTY ROTTEN SOUNDRELS, 1988
And now NINE QUEENS, 2001, set in Buenos Aires in an Argentina that looks like downtown Chicago but for the ubiquity of slurred Spanish (hey, come to think of it …). Juan (Gaston Pauls) is scamming forty-five pesos from a convenience store when he is rescued by Marcos (Ricardo Darin). The big con is plotted. A girl materializes – nay, a babe: Marcos's disapproving sister Valeria (Leticia Bredice), severe in bun, stiletto heels, and tight, Hilton Hotel manager skirt. Our triangle is set. The Nine Queens are a rare block of stamps, nine of them, issued by the Weimar republic, very rare, very valuable. And Marcos has a line on a fake set that he wants to sell to a collector who is in town for just one day.
The big con is set in motion.
And then Something Goes Wrong.
As novels are the ideal stage for mysteries, movies are the ideal stage for con-game stories. In truth, all movies are a con - - but one in which we are the willing mark. There is no spontaneity - - they're all actors following a script. Yet, when we settle into our velvet chairs and the lights go down, we accept that what we are seeing is a reality. You can't cheat an honest man, as W. C. Fields titled one of his movies. We want to be puzzled, to be SLEUTHED or DEATHTRAPPED. We match our wits in seeing against the director's wits in concealing. The director cons us and – the con within the con – we know that he will try to con us. So we sit forward in our seats, guessing and second-guessing … and having fun. Follow the money, Deep Throat told Woodward. And in a con, watch the money as the three-card, three-character monte is played out before your eyes.
Con games have rules. For one, no violence. The game must be played voluntarily. Seeking to prove himself talented, Juan spies a total stranger at an apartment elevator. "I can get her to give me her purse in two minutes." "Freely, " says Marcos, "she must give it freely." Two minutes later she has done so. In the ideal con, we learn in HOUSE OF GAMES and THE STING, there must be no snapback. The mark must never know he has been conned.
There's a great and grotesque Monty Python bit where a distraught son (John Cleese) arrives at the funeral home. "My mother has just died," he says in muted tones, "can you help me?" "Oh, yeah, squire!" pipes the undertaker (Graham Chapman). "We deal in stiffs!" They discuss appropriate methods for laying mother to rest ("What'll it be, a burner, a bury-er, or a dump-er?") and then Chapman asks, "Where is she?" Cleese drops his eyes. "She's in this sack." And then you realize, there is no straight man.
The art of moviemaking is a con and there are no straight men. NINE QUEENS uses all the con-movie tropes, but the acting is fine and the pace lively. Good plot-oriented foreign movies are invariably given American remakes: LA FEMME NIKITA into POINT OF NO RETURN, INSOMNIA into INSOMNIA. When this one comes around, David Mamet (con noir movie HOUSE OF GAMES) will do the screenplay, Matt Damon (ROUNDERS) will play Juan (now John), Joe Mantegna (THINGS CHANGE) will handle Marcos (now Mark), and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (THE COLOR OF MONEY) will play Valeria (Valerie). But they will have a hard time making a slicker con movie than NINE QUEENS.
P S The movie has a further ironic con-with-a-con whose discussion would spoil the story. If you have already seen it and want to know, reply and ask.
P P S The con depends specifically on knowing that a particular Argentine bank has failed and will close the next day. Between the time this movie was shot and when we saw it, banks all over Argentina collapsed as the peso collapsed. Follow the money? The greatest con of all is the one governments run when they persuade citizens to part with money.