The Delinquents Review | An Imperfect Getaway

Writer-director Rodrigo Moreno’s The Delinquents, Argentina’s official selection for this year’s Best International Film Oscar contention, takes nifty, overlapping premises for an existential heist movie and doomed romance and unfortunately runs them into the ground. Sometimes charming and perceptive, but more often than not overblown, it’s a well made film that doesn’t seem to know when to leave well enough alone. There are sumptuous visuals, considered allusions, strong performances, and well rounded character arcs, but The Delinquents is altogether too fussy to feel natural or enjoyable. Moreno’s film is about people struggling to attain a sense of personal autonomy, but it shouldn’t be as much of a struggle for the viewer.

Long suffering Buenos Aires bank employee Morán (Daniel Eliás) decides he can’t take another day at his job, so he hatches a unique plan on the fly to better his future. He makes off with a little less than $650,000 USD in a duffle bag, takes some time to collect his thoughts, and then turns himself in to the authorities, the idea being that serving three and half years in prison and stashing his haul where no one can find it is better than working twenty-five more years in a soul crushing job until he hits retirement age. To assist in his plan, Morán enlists the help of fellow bank employee Román (Esteban Bigliardi). When pressure builds at work to find out who assisted in the theft, Román starts to freak out and crack. It’s then that the imprisoned Morán tells Román to hide the cash in a hyper-specific place in Cardoba. While on his mission, it’s there that Román’s life begins to take a turn when he starts a flirtation with a free spirited woman named Norma (Margarita Molfino).

It’s clear from the opening moments of The Delinquents – where Moreno methodically follows and observes Morán on his way to work – that this is going to be a work of slow cinema, but it’s not immediately apparent why this approach doesn’t work in the best interests of the material. The somewhat quieter and gentler moments of languishing in one place for an extended period of time – like watching lovers rolling back and forth across a bed or a child playing the melodica – are pleasant, and remind viewers that the world isn’t such a terrible place sometimes. But there are just as many overwrought moments of indulgence that drag on forever, like a hackneyed conversation amongst characters about the death of film or a truly grating poetry reading montage. For every moment that’s worthwhile in The Delinquents, Moreno offers up something grating and pretentious in return.

The plot and character outlines created by Moreno are solid, and make the viewer think about the morality of Morán and Román’s situation. At first, Morán’s motivations make sense to the viewer, but one quickly realizes that he’s kind of a idiot who almost immediately is made to regret his decision to choose prison over the outside world (which he later reverses, again, in a clever way that’s ruined in execution). He also turns out to be an enormously selfish and conniving jerk, who cares little about Román or anyone else around him. When the story shifts to show Román’s side of the story, Bigliardi gives a strong performance as someone caught between a rock and hard place, wracked with guilt about what he’s been virtually forced into doing by his imprisoned “friend.”

Both characters go on parallel tracks that will eventually meet back up again for a conclusion that’s more interesting than satisfying, and one that will surely infuriate some who will wonder why they sat through three hours of meandering for this. I happen to appreciate the ending, but not the steps that it takes to get to that point. Nor do I have much of an affinity for Moreno’s confused stylistic choice of imposing 70s styled decor, music, and mannerisms to what’s so obviously a modern world. Moreno’s employment of dry, observant humour is also hit or miss, with some gags and tossed off lines of dialogue earning chuckles, while others hang there without much payoff or reason for being there. There’s a sharpness to the concept, a good sense of deductive reasoning, and room for the viewer to make their own judgments about what they’re seeing, but the ends doesn’t justify the means.

The Delinquents, right down to its carefully calculated and admittedly slick editing, is a movie where major, defining moments happen seemingly at the drop of a hat, without enough proper build to make those beats resonate beyond their initial introduction. Then, the film goes out of its way to not explicitly discuss what they all could mean, instead leaving that up to the viewer. That’s all well and good, and the sign of an intelligent movie, but it also doesn’t leave anything worthwhile in their absence, preferring to simply prattle on about less interesting themes that seem to have been shoehorned into the project (most notably a subplot about a corporate fixer who’s making the lives of the remaining bank employees a living hell). The best moments in The Delinquents are organic, natural, and thoughtful. The worst are rigid, stiff, and about as exciting as analyzing someone’s already filed tax returns. Unfortunately for Moreno, that balance is nearly a 50/50 blend. It’s ambitiously dense, but The Delinquents could maintain its subtext and layered narrative in a number of better, less languorous ways.

The Delinquents opens at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto on Friday, October 27, 2023. It opens on October 29 in Vancouver, November 3 in Montreal, and expands to additional Canadian cities throughout the fall and winter.