Outside the Law

 

CHILE '76 (B+) - Carmen is a woman of means who is asked to assist a wounded young insurgent in Pinochet's Chile in the mid-'70s. Newcomer Manuela Martelli conjures up a simmering tale of danger under autocratic rule.

Aline Kuppenheim is the placid face of privilege as Carmen, who is renovating her beach house when a local priest asks her to tend to a bullet wound of Elias (Nicolas Sepulveda) at a safe house. Carmen's husband and son are doctors, but she decades ago gave up her pretensions to practice medicine while serving with the Red Cross during World War II. She surreptitiously finagles drugs and supplies without trying to get caught. She also gets swept up in the secret underground in an effort to find Elias safe passage. One false move and she and Elias and the padre could be disappeared.

Martelli's storytelling (she wrote the script with Alejandra Moffat) is clever and efficient. She sets the table for the whole movie in the first five minutes via two scenes full of subtext and visual cues. Kuppenheim, with a conventional middle-aged beauty, speaks volumes through her precise facial reactions. It's not always clear who is a good person and who might be a collaborator. The setting of the sea is a knowing nod to the Pinochet administration's fondness for dumping its enemies into the ocean. 

It all contributes to a growing sense of dread, not unlike "The Lives of Others," set in 1980s Germany. Perfectly paced, "Chile '76" is a chilling lesson in defying both the political system and social castes.

THE DELINQUENTS (B+) - What price freedom? Splayed leisurely over three hours, this Argentine drama goes deep into character study to tell the tale of two men who collaborate on robbing the bank they work at in order to avoid a life of wage drudgery. An intentional stint in jail for the mastermind sets the table for a generous sweep of time that allows writer-director Rodrigo Moreno to offer a mini-homage to "Crime and Punishment" by way of "Godfather's" storytelling techniques. 

Moran (Daniel Elias) decides to steal from the bank just enough money to cover the expected wages and retirement needs of himself and one other person, whom he recruits to hold on to the money while Moran serves a precisely prescribed prison term of three to six years under civil law. The accomplice is accommodating co-worker Roman (Esteban Bigliardi, above), a lowly teller with a hangdog expression who succumbs to the pressure of participating and consents to take the bag of money to a remote location by a lake surrounded by woods and hills. (Moreno, for some reason, quaintly plays with anagrams to name these characters as well as others, named Morna, Norma and Ramon. He also has the same actor, German de Silva, play both a bank manager and an inmate.) The first hour sets up the heist and sends Moran off to prison after a bit of reconnaissance to decide where to stash the cash. The second hour finds Roman actually hiding the loot and while doing so running into Morna, Norman and Ramon, who record the sights and sounds of the idyllic areas surrounding their village for a documentary about gardening. His brief trip fractures the connection to his wife, Flor (a tough Gabriela Saidon), upon his return.

Moran will learn that life in prison is not as easy as he may have expected (some of the money will have to be set aside to pay protection to a fellow inmate), and Roman will face consequences at work and in his marriage. A somewhat implausible coincidence will bond the men by the time Moran's prison sentence ends. Key to that is Norma, brought to life in a grounded performance by Margarita Molfino, in a deftly sketched characterization. In the final hour, we finally get a flashback to when Moran first visited the town, before his imprisonment; he falls in love with the rural lifestyle of Norma, Morna and Ramon, and perhaps regrets now having to interrupt this utopian existence for a stint of hard time. I was reminded of Michael Corleone's jaunt to Italy during his days in hiding in "The Godfather," especially the languid pace and the charm of the countryside. 

The film in general has a major feel of that '70s Drift of the American New Wave ("Five Easy Pieces" also comes to mind), a tactile fabric almost, so you don't mind the leisurely pace. The final scene -- of a character ambling along on horseback into that same countryside -- features a perfectly timed needle drop and a slow reverse zoom to reveal a John Ford panorama as the credits roll, and you feel hope for both men, even if we never learn their eventual fate.

BONUS TRACKS

The opening scene from "The Delinquents" features the first of several songs from my favorite tango composer, Astor Piazzola, "20 Years Ago" (with Gerry Mulligan):

One plot thread involves an album by Buenos Aires blues artist Pappo getting passed around among the characters. His "Volume 1," from 1971, includes "Where Is Freedom?"