Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, inspired by our Queer Latin Excellence series, let’s revisit an underrated queer film from Argentina, 2000’s Burnt Money.
Throughout this past week, Queerty has been profiling and highlighting the diversity, range & accomplishments of the Latino queer community. In keeping with the celebration, this week we’ll be diving into an Argentinian film from the early 2000s that portrays the beauty, tragedy, and complexity of a groundbreaking queer relationship from the last century—and is perhaps a peak example of the mantra “Be gay, do crime.”
How about we take this to the next level?
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In 1965, a group of criminals got together in Argentina to orchestrate the robbery of an armored truck. When the crime went awry, three of the robbers—two of whom were in an intimate romantic relationship—were forced to escape and hide in the nearby city of Montevideo, across the Uruguayan border, until the heat was off them.
But they could only hide for so long, and eventually their cover was blown, each of them falling in an ensuing police siege. Three decades later, a movie was made about their story.
The Set-Up
Released in 2000, Burnt Money (original title Plata Quemada) was directed by Marcelo Piñeyro, an award-winning filmmaker who rose to fame by producing The Official Story in 1985, the first Latin-American movie to ever win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The feature is based on the novel of the same name by Ricardo Piglia, who dramatized the events of the 1965 robbery and heightened the romantic and tragic aspects of the relationship at its center.
Leonardo Sbaraglia and Eduardo Noriega play two criminals who go by El Nene & Angel, respectively, but who are collectively known in the streets as “The Twins.” The two met while cruising in the bathrooms of Buenos Aires, and quickly became inseparable—they were lovers, and eventually, partners in crime, pulling off petty thefts on easy targets, until they’re recruited by an organized crime syndicate for a planned truck robbery.
When the crime goes wrong, they are forced to hide away for months at an abandoned apartment in Montevideo, alongside fellow criminal El Cuervo (Pablo Echarri), a womanizing loose cannon who does not trust the Twins—nor does he approve of their relationship. As claustrophobia and paranoia start to set in, the Twins’ relationship is put to the test, especially once Nene begins an affair with local prostitute Giselle (Leticia Bredice), much to the jealousy and dismay of Angel.
The trio’s eventually forced out of hiding after one of the gang’s leaders is discovered and killed. When they try to flee over the border again, they’re cornered into their apartment with no way out. Accepting their fate, the couple goes out in a literal blaze of glory, burning all the stolen money as the police close in on them
A Crime Noir That Sizzles
The film is a crime noir that takes inspiration from two classic sources: For one, it’s clearly indebted to the classic gangster films of Hollywood’s Golden Age, evoking the genre’s tropes with shadow play, lovers of mysterious intentions, and MacGuffins a’plenty (ultimately insignificant plot devices that drive the narrative). But you can also sense the influence of the neo-noir renaissance from the ’80s & ’90s in its heightened violence, sweaty interplay of crime & sex, and morally dubious protagonists who we nevertheless root for,
And it’s all grounded in its two leads’ sizzling chemistry. It’s ingrained in the plot that Angel and Nene move as one entity, their nickname referring to their inextricable bond. And this would not work without actors Sbaraglia and Noruega infusing the characters with real charisma, sexual attraction, and empathy. We understand why these two broken men gravitate to each other, and why they’re the only person that either can trust. Because of this, the gradual dissolution of their relationship and the tragedy of the final act hit much deeper.
The Gay Bonnie & Clyde
It’s impossible not to think of Bonnie And Clyde while watching Burnt Money, perhaps the greatest criminal love story ever put on film. And it’s all intentional. The two pairs of robbers follow similar narrative and thematic trajectories: outcasts that found an equal in one another other, the only other person that could understand them. Then, when sent on the run, their love is tested, which they pass by reinforcing their mutual devotion. However, this devotion is ultimately doomed by society and must be punished. Because those who break the rules have to pay the consequences.
In both cases, the audience is meant to sympathize with the rule-breakers. And these themes are elevated even further by making the central couple queer. When Bonnie And Clyde was made in 1969, the counterculture movement was beginning to take form, and thus it portrays the main characters as young rebels sticking it to the system, which the system responds to with violence.
But in Burnt Money, the rules being broken cut much deeper. It’s not just the written law that El Nene and Angel break: in the eyes of conservative, mid-’60s Latin America, they go against the rules of human and moral behavior. The system is not punishing them just for a robbery; it is punishing them for existing.
Burning It All Down
The final sequence, as the Twins lie in the arms of each other, covered in blood and sporting erections, is of particular beauty when understood in the context of these ideas. Even if the entire world is encroaching in on you, and you’re about to be engulfed in flames, dying in the arms of love most is still the most dignified way to go.
Burnt Money is a thematically rich crime thriller with accomplished filmmaking eye and engrossing performances. But beyond that, it’s just a damn good time. It’s entertaining, it’s sexy, and it plays into the tropes of mainstream action films while maintaining a subversive undercurrent. It underlines one of the biggest running ideas about being queer: no matter what rules you break, for many, the biggest crime you can commit is being yourself. So we rise against that, time and again.
Burnt Money is currently available for digital rental or purchase via Amazon Prime Video.
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