‘The Delinquents’ Is A Genius Argentine Tragicomedy On The Elusive Nature Of Freedom [Cannes Review]

Guy Lodge Film Critic By the brazenly esoteric standards of Argentine director Lisandro Alonso, his last feature “Jauja” was virtually a concession to the mainstream. A lushly shot 19th-century historical drama led by Viggo Mortensen, it was — until a typically disorienting coda — close to linear in its colonialist-quest narrative, even as it moved in slow, ever-widening circles, and duly became Alonso’s most widely released film to date. Nine years later (the longest gap yet in a career taken at his own pace), Alonso’s follow-up “Eureka” playfully appears to mock whatever tentative gestures “Jauja” made toward accessibility: A glisteningly opaque meditation on Indigenous living that refracts viewers’ interpretations as it repeatedly switches gear, focus, locus and story, it’s a film built to frustrate those who don’t succumb to its oneiric spell, not that it especially imparts its secrets to those who do.

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Whether it’s the flat white lighting and washed-out color grading that gives The Delinquents the look of a ‘70s TV serial, or the fact that much of it is set in a mountain swimming beach where people claim to see apparitions, there is an undercurrent of genuine oddity running beneath this long, complex film. Screening at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section for innovative or personal cinema, Rodrigo Moreno’s story begins with a bank robbery. The very ease with which this crime is committed is odd in itself: Moran (Daniel Elias) simply walks into the bank vault, puts a pile of American dollars in his gym bag and goes home. Not what you expect in a heist film, but here is the point. Over the next three hours, Moreno will deconstruct the genre with the calm focus of a safecracker taking apart a lock.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic A year after collecting his second Palme d‘Or for “The Triangle of Sadness,” Ruben Östlund finds himself on the other end of the equation at the Cannes Film Festival, overseeing the official competition jury awarding this year’s prizes. Östlund is co-presenting the awards with fellow jurors Paul Dano and Brie Larson, Moroccan director Maryam Touzani, French actor Denis Ménochet, British-Zambian writer-director Rungano Nyoni, Afghan author Atiq Rahimi, Argentinian writer-director Damián Szifrón and “Titane” director Julia Ducournau (another Palme d’Or winner). Full list of prizes below.

Jessica Kiang Most of us know the illicit rush of the sick day slyly pulled when you’re not really sick. The turning you ignore on your commute, but that one day, for no real reason, you take. Oh, that sudden, intoxicating sniff of freedom! It’s perhaps the closest thing that many of us get as adults to the ceaseless adventure we thought, as children, we’d be living. Argentinian writer-director Rodrigo Moreno’s delightful “The Delinquents” knows the feeling too. Over the course of its droll, meandering, indefinably strange three hours, it may well persuade you that the crazy thing is not to break from your normal routine. The crazy thing is to ever go back. Filmmakers have long been attracted to the heist format for the high drama it can generate, but Moreno begins his movie with a bank robbery so banal it’s hard to believe that’s actually what is going on. And yet, at the end of a workday in a basement lock-room, here is balding bank worker Morán, played with a perfectly defeated air of middle-management moral relativism by Daniel Elias, packing wads of notes into a concealed duffel bag. The vault is no gleaming piece of “Mission: Impossible” engineering, but a scuffed, scruffy cell in which the note-counting machine keeps getting stuck mid-riffle. Even the vault door looks like it’s fed up of being a vault door, and is only continuing to function as such because that is all it knows. 

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Marta Balaga Debuting Chilean director Felipe Gálvez doesn’t shy away from controversy. On the contrary: he actually welcomes it. “I love to be controversial,” he tells Variety in Cannes, where he is introducing blood-soaked Western “The Settlers,” posing some uncomfortable questions about his country’s colonial past.   “If something is controversial, it’s a good sign. It means it’s interesting. I am trying to provoke with my film, because this conversation is far from over.” Set in 1901, “The Settlers” sees three men (Benjamin Westfall, Mark Stanley and Camilo Arancibia) hired by a rich Spanish landowner (Alfredo Castro) to mark out his immense property. One is American, one Scottish, one of Indigenous descent. But what is really expected of them is to get rid of the Indigenous tribes.

Christopher Vourlias A host of emerging talents gathered at Cannes’ Plage des Palmes on May 22 for the latest edition of Focus COPRO’, an event launched in 2018 by the Cannes Court Métrage Rendez-vous Industry program to give a boost to first-time feature directors. Seven up-and-coming filmmakers whose previous shorts have bowed at the Cannes Film Festival and other prestigious fests including Berlin, New Directors New Films and Clermont-Ferrand, gathered under sunny skies on the French Riviera for an informal lunch with a host of industry decision-makers. The event offered a casual setting for the directors to chat about their upcoming feature debuts, seated alongside veteran producers and sales agents, as well as reps from leading co-production markets, labs, residencies, workshops and institutions focused on identifying and nurturing emerging talent.

Most movies about England’s King Henry VIII like to focus on the mercurial monarch’s failed marriages. His six wives have been collectively described as divorced, died, beheaded, divorced, beheaded, survived. That last one, the little talked-about Katherine Parr, had the distinction of outlasting Henry — their marriage was about four years as he started to succumb to the result of hard living. She was there during that time, but also a wife who if she weren’t so connected to the King easily could have qualified as a feminist. She not only was the first English woman to have a book published, was privately a radical Protestant in an England that had been staunchly Catholic, but also a sharply intelligent woman who had a head on her shoulders and was determined to keep it there.

Sunday night at the 76th Cannes Film Festival was all about the world premiere of the Jude Law and Alicia Vikander Henry VIII period pic Firebrand, which received a royal response from the crowd in the Grand Theatre Lumiere with an eight and a half minute standing ovation.

Sales: Luxbox Living in an idyllic Andalusia, a couple in love grapples with the realities of making a living through OnlyFans. Screened at Seville and Tallinn. Sales: Begin Again Films. One of the big Spanish action-thrillers hitting this Cannes market, from a specialist (“Sky High”). Pre-sold to France (Kinovista), Germany and Italy (Koch Media) with Tripictures releasing in Spain. Sales: Latido

Cannes Film Festival. The distributor has acquired the rights to the film in North America, UK, Ireland, Latin America, Turkey, Italy, India, and Benelux and has plans for both a theatrical and streaming plan in the coming months.

EXCLUSIVE: Here at the Cannes Film Festival, Mubi has taken rights in North America, UK, Italy, Latin America, Turkey, India and Benelux to Un Certain Regard movie The Delinquents (Los Delincuentes).

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EXCLUSIVE: Filmax has acquired international rights to Spanish-Argentinian animated feature Robotia and will present the pic to buyers at the Cannes market.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent El Estudio and Morbido are launching The Latin House of Horror, a hugely ambitious feature film slate channelling the voices of a powerful new generation of genre directors – and indeed writers – emerging in Spain and, most especially, Latin America.  The slate is designed to supercharge genre production in Latin America, in ambition, profile and exports, just as Filmax’s Fantastic Factory did a generation ago in Spain, El Estudio producer Enrique López Lavigne told Variety.  Mexico’s Sula Films, headed by Mexican producer Alejandro Sugich (“Los Hermanos Salvador”), will also produce the series. Vicente Canales’ Film Factory Entertainment is handling world sales. 

Emiliano De Pablos Top Chilean fiction house Parox, producer of “Invisible Heroes,” has kick-started principal photography on international co-production “Los mil días de Allende” (“Allende, the Thousand Days”), a historical drama mini-series about the last three years in the life of Chilean President Salvador Allende. Alfredo Castro – one of Latin America’s most respected actors and a Pablo Larraín regular, star of films such as “Karnawal” and “El Club” – leads the mini-series cast as Allende; Benjamín Vicuña (“Besieged,” “Locked Up”) plays Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. The four-episode, 55-minute fiction drama shoot is taking place entirely in Chile, lensing from May 15 for two months, under “Besieged” and “Inés of My Soul” director Nicolás Acuña.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Five Catalan movies made Cannes Festival’s cut, six were selected for Marché du Film sections. Details and other top Catalan movies on the Croisette: “20,000 Species of Bees,” (Estibaliz Urresola) One of the big winners at Berlin, taking Leading Performance, and two other key prizes, and now healthy racking up healthy sales, including a Film Movement U.S. pickup, “Bees” builds from a naturalistic base – a family off for a village summer holiday – to become a moving an ode to women’s freedom. Produced out of Barcelona by Valérie Delpierre’s Inicia Films. Sales: Luxbox

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Luis Ortega has wrapped production in Argentina on “Kill the Jockey,” starring Úrsula Corberó (“Money Heist”) and Nahuel Pérez Biscayart (“120 BPM”), which is shaping up as one of the biggest upcoming movies from Latin America. Ortega’s follow-up to 2018 Un Certain Regard hit “El Angel,” which sold worldwide and set a box office record in Argentina, “Kill the Jockey” has been snapped up for international sales by Vicente Canales’ Film Factory Entertainment, which also sold “El Angel.” TelevisaUnivision VOD service ViX will roll out “Kill the Jockey” in the U.S. and Latin America. Scanbox handles distribution in Scandinavia.