'Burnt Money'; [Review]

今天做文献检索的时候竟然在Umi quest上面发现这个，嘿嘿

A. O. Scott.
New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)).
New York, N.Y.: Oct 19, 2001. pg. E.1:29

Copyright New York Times Company Oct 19, 2001
Directed by Marcelo Pineyro
In Spanish, with English subtitles
Not rated, 125 minutes

''Plata Quemada'' (''Burnt Money''), a new film by the Argentine director Marcelo Pineyro, which opens today at the Quad (34 West 13th Street, Greenwich Village), presents a curious mixture of strangeness and deja vu. It starts out as a stylish, convoluted caper film in which a gang is assembled for a big score that doesn't go quite as smoothly as planned. The heist involves a disgraced tango singer, a crooked government official and an assortment of underworld types, but the movie's real focus is on the three younger members: Cuervo (Pablo Echarri), the girl-crazy, drug-addled getaway driver, and Angel (Eduardo Noriega) and Nene (Leonardo Sbaraglia), gay lovers known in criminal circles as the twins.

The robbery, in which several policemen are killed and Angel is wounded, is really a prologue to Mr. Pineyro's main concern, which is the lurid psychodrama that develops once the thieves flee to Uruguay, where they spend most of the picture waiting for the inevitable bad ending. The crime story, which was difficult to follow in any case, fades into the background.

Angel, who has always heard voices in his head, becomes ever more unbalanced and remote from Nene, who leaves their claustrophobic safe house for nocturnal wanderings in wondrously cinematic locales. At one of these, a bar in the middle of a lushly decadent fairground, he meets a woman named Giselle (Leticia Bredice), and they begin an agonized love affair, which helps to hasten the long orgy of violence and currency burning that ends this sad tale.

The passions of ''Plata Quemada'' are as bold as the images. Mr. Pineyro has an eye for arresting compositions, and his color scheme ranges from bruised to bloody. His juxtapositions show a taste for extremity that is no less effective for being a little obvious: Nene's sexual encounter in a men's room is intercut with Angel's visit to a church; later, Nene and Giselle's lovemaking alternates with Angel shooting up and mutilating himself. The desperate, destructive longing that binds Angel and Nene and the carnal spark that arises between Nene and Giselle seem to be matters less of psychology than primal blood rituals.

These characters exist without motive, but they pulse with a despairing, intensely erotic energy. Their moody romanticism has a curiously stylized feel, like the tango-tinged Argentine pop, at once fervid and formal, on the soundtrack. Along with Cuervo, Nene and Angel prowl the beaches and fairgrounds outside Montevideo in narrow-lapeled suits, dark ties and sunglasses, looking for all the world like the stars of a brooding Spanish-language remake of ''Reservoir Dogs'' or ''Ocean's Eleven,'' and then conclude their sojourn with a fusillade that makes ''Bonnie and Clyde'' look restrained. A. O. SCOTT