Nine Keys of Nine Queens, the film with Ricardo Darín that returns to theaters

He was able to reconcile auteur cinema with popularity, and it was the first great success of a new wave Ricardo Darin. Nine queensthe film of Fabian Bielinskywill be re-released in theaters this Thursday, February 22, in a remastered version in 4K format.

The Argentine film production company Patagonik was entrusted with the film’s digitization work. The digitization of the film was carried out starting from a frame-by-frame scan of the original 35 mm image negative, preserved by the Patagonik production company and the Buenos Aires Film Museum.

Under the supervision of the film’s director of photography, Marcelo Camorino, digital cleaning and restoration work was carried out, as well as a new color correction to recover the original characteristics. The sound restoration was carried out in the Netherlands, based on Dolby Digital digitization.

Fabián Bielinsky loved cinema since he was a child. During the period of the National College of Buenos Aires he played Continuity of the parksadaptation of a story by Cortázar, and after graduating from ENERC, the INCAA Film School, he directed The wait (1983), a short film of Borgesian inspiration. After Nine queensHe directed The aura (2005), also starring Ricardo Darín as epileptic taxidermist Esteban Espinosa. TO The aura he liked to call it “a psychological thriller”, otherwise Nine queensthat it was “a comedy with two thieves” that absorbed its spirit The shot (1973), by George Roy Hill.

Bielinsky, born on February 3, 1959, died very young, at the age of 47, on June 29, 2006, of a heart attack while he slept. I was in San Pablo casting for an advertisement.

Below, nine curiosities about it Nine queens.

Bielinsky had finished the screenplay in 1997, after writing it for 8 weeks. In mid-1998, he was the winner, among 354 screenplays, of the “New Talents” competition, whose jury was chaired by José Martínez Suárez, brother of Mirtha Legrand. The competition was organized by the production company Patagonik Films. Curiously, Patagonik had rejected it shortly before.

Two years before the premiere of Nine queens, director Carlos Sorín called me to his production company. The idea was to do an interview and he told me that his assistant and co-writer would be there. It was Fabian Bielinsky. That film was never made, but Fabián, who like me had graduated from ENERC, the INCAA film school, took me aside at the end of the conference and told me: “I just won the ‘New Talents’ competition and I’m going to shoot it, my first film. Can we take a note?” We did, and that interview was the first one referenced Nine queens.

The film takes place in just over 24 hours. Two scammers who work by stealing tricks on the street cross paths. Marcos (Ricardo Darín) is expert, Juan (Gaston Paolo), An apprentice. The first saves the inexperienced Juan from arrest after failing in an attempted scam in a shop. And he tells him about an immediate deal: the sale of a collection of fake stamps, for half a million dollars, the “nine queens”, of the Weimar Republic. Juan needs 70,000 pesos to get his father out of prison and asks Marcos to join the company. The rest is history.

Fabián Bielinsky’s film was released in theaters on August 31, 2000 and was an unexpected success. Its 1,194,633 spectators place it in fourth place among the most watched films of the year Dinosaur, Dad is an idol AND Mission Impossible 2and above the Oscar winner American beauty and Hollywood tanks like them Gladiator, Stuart Little AND A perfect storm.

The film, which was not shot on a film set, but in real locations, was nominated for twenty-nine international awards, of which it won twenty-one. Considered a masterpiece, in a 2022 ranking of the 100 best films of Argentine cinema, it came tenth.

Nine queens It had a painful Hollywood adaptation, produced by George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh. The first of Criminal It was at the 2004 Venice Film Festival and the cast consisted of John C. Reilly (the character of Darín), the Mexican Diego Luna (the character of Gastón Pauls) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (the character of Leticia Brédice, Valeria). . She missed the whole robbery game, it was boring and pitiful. It was the directorial debut of Gregory Jacobs, who was a frequent assistant director to Soderbergh. There was also an Indian version (made in Hindi), titled Master of Bluffs! (2005), with Abhishek Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra (now wife of Nick Jonas) and Ritesh Deshmukh.

During the filming of the scene in which Juan and Marcos chase a motorbike, Gastón Pauls fell and injured his knee and was taken to Argerich hospital where he received four stitches.

The song that Juan refers to several times throughout the film is Rita Pavone’s 1976 hit The brick’s dance from the LP There is no one like you, written by Eduardo Verde and Bruno Canfora. As for the film the song is supposed to appear in, no reference can be found, but correlating the dates might just be a matter of guessing. Two on the landing (1976), with Rita Pavone.

There was a plan to adapt the film into the format of a television series. BTF Media founders Ricardo Coeto and Francisco Cordero announced this on the 20th anniversary of its premiere in 2020. “We are delighted to bring back such an iconic piece. This remake will also be legendary. This is a clever story full of twists and turns that is definitely fun to watch. “We are very confident that it will attract a large audience.” To date there is no news regarding the completion of the project.

(And a yapa)

In the final scene (spoilers in case you haven’t seen the film), the audience discovers that the rich Spaniard who bought the Nine Queens is an Argentinian swindler and not a Galician businessman. But in reality the actor was Ignasi Abadal, born and raised in Barcelona, ​​Spain. It would have been difficult for a person born and raised in Argentina to speak for a long time with a Spanish accent without his compatriots noticing.

In short, one of the best thrillers in the history of Argentine cinema, which, despite being often broadcast on cable or television, is worth revisiting (or rediscovering) where it was born, on the big screen.