The Delinquents

Morán is a clerk in a Buenos Aires bank. One day he takes money from the vault: exactly the sum he would earn between now and retirement, no more and no less. Then he turns himself in. The plan is that his colleague Román will keep the money while he serves three and a half years, and neither of them will have to work again. Román agrees, and the real imprisonment turns out to be his. Rodrigo Moreno writes and directs. Daniel Elías plays Morán and Esteban Bigliardi plays Román. It had its world premiere in Un Certain Regard at the 2023 Cannes film festival. The first draft of the screenplay came out of Hugo Fregonese's 1949 Argentine film Apenas un delincuente; the idea of the protagonist stealing from his own workplace comes from there. The real subject is not money but time. Morán's arithmetic is not a robbery but a life: he works out how many hours he would have to work and buys those hours. The narrative tells it not as a crime film but as a patient, scattered film about daily life. It runs over three hours, and that is deliberate. The film puts the same question to the audience: what are you spending your time on. In the second half it moves to the countryside near Córdoba and changes pace entirely; some viewers lose it there. Who it is for: viewers who like contemporary Argentine cinema and long films that play with rhythm. Who it is not for: it is very long, the plotting is loose on purpose, and anyone waiting for suspense finds none.