The press kit for this Argentinian movie mentions David Mamet, and it is hard to resist the comparison. Like House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner, Nine Queens is about a complex con that you can't completely tease apart until the very end. The Nine Queens of the title are printed on a sheet of Weimar Republic stamps, and of course they're very valuable. Two crooks -- who might or might not be working together-- are trying to sell the stamps -- which might or might not be fake -- to a businessman, who may or may not be ripping them off in return. From there on, it just gets more complicated, with more reversals and surprises than I could figure out even in retrospect.

The dialogue isn't in Mamet's class but that would be asking too much. The roles of the two swindlers, one of them a cynical criminal, the other a sleepy guy who's always a bit too honest, are splendidly cast, but the real star here is the satisfyingly twisted plot which resolves quite beautifully.

Written and directed by Fabian Bielinsky.

Argentina, 2000. 115 min.