For many years, love on the lam has been the wet dream of filmmakers and audiences. Criminal fugitives, living on the fringes, rejecting the conventions of civilization; they take what they want, when they want. And if the whole world turns against them, all they need is each other. At once glamorous and tawdry, poetic and plain-spoken, jaundiced and fantastical, Marcelo Pineyro’s Burnt Money (aka: Plata Quemada) fulfills the promise of the genre as well as any heterosexual story. If not better. The boy couple that rocks Burnt Money: The Twins (Angel and El Nene) share everything. Needles, liquor, guns, danger and the same bed. Angel grapples with insanity and discontinues sex with Nene, terrified that he will follow down the same abyss. Strangely enough, we never see them consummate, but the sexual grace and tension is so palpable you can watch them share a cigarette and feel your trousers shrink. It takes incredible focus and conviction to touch another human being like this, with such unabashed tenderness and adoration, and Eduardo Noriega (Angel) and Leonardo Sbaraglia (Nene) are nothing short of remarkable. The frissons they generate are exquisite and agonizing.
Burnt Money might conceivably be the opposite of a cautionary tale. Though no one could accuse Pineyro of glorifying the life of a career criminal, he makes the case again and again that The Twins are living as well as anybody could, given the hand they were dealt. Even in the criminal world “faggots” are considered low on the food chain but not these guys. They’re reckless, hot-headed, remorseless and alienated. They and the third fugitive, Cuervo, wear sleek, sophisticated suits, ambling gamely, flirting, drinking, cavorting and speeding. They are also psychopaths. Angel and Nene are serious about their profession and their sexual identities and make no apologies for either. It is unclear whether they openly embrace their sexuality because they’re rebels or crooks and this may be exactly the point. They flourish on the outs because society has robbed them of anything to lose.
Though Cuervo (Pablo Echarri) begins with contempt towards the two, it gradually changes to affection. The question of virility and queer attraction diminishes as the relationship evolves. Or perhaps it increases. Cuervo resents Angel watching him change clothes, but feels the need to explain that cold air affects his dangle. These three share many traits, but Cuervo is without a doubt the live wire. Boisterous and extravagant, he has an undeniable charm, sometimes precipitating the boys’ buried impulses. He is a kindred spirit. There would seem to be a GIRLS KEEP OUT sign hanging on Burnt Money. More than once these raw, dishy guys invite each other to dance, and despite the hesitance (and Pineyro’s selective use of nudity) there seems to be more going on between the men than with their lady friends. Being Cuervo’s confidante only makes Vivi a weak-link and a target, and Giselle (Leticia Bredice) betrays Nene when he chooses Angel over her. Granted, she is the victim of Nene’s ambivalence, but it’s hard to feel a lot of sympathy when she ends it, screaming, "Puto! Puto! Puto!" (Fag! Fag! Fag!)
Based on a book by Ricardo Piglia and the true story of a Buenos Aires bank robbery in the 1960’s, Burnt Money has an intense visual diction that is disturbing and electrifying. Nene doing push-ups as if about to spring, Angel slipping his flask into Nene’s jacket, Nene submerged in the bathtub as we hear his soliloquy about incarceration. Pop and Rock from the period punctuates and deprecates sequence after sequence and Pineyro isn’t afraid to shake us till our teeth rattle (though never resorting to cruelty). Chapters like the one where he switch cuts between Angel kneeling before a life-sized crucifix and Nene doing the same to fellate a tearoom trick go far beyond audacity. Pineyro may be an iconoclast, but his strength of nerve comes from thematic acuity.
Burnt Money is a powerful if controversial paradigm for queer mens’ struggle for self-acceptance. Once The Twins dissolve vestigial ties to civilization and embrace their own path to manhood, the voices that have been tormenting Angel disappear. They strip down to their underwear, burn their clothes and whoop it up like Indians. Giselle’s flat becomes another hideout and before the credits roll, a war zone and arena for their homicidal defiance. Dismissed as pariahs, they construct a post-Apocalyptic paradise from the scraps that have been left behind, though no less valid for that.