“The problem is that it then goes off on tangents and the plot becomes secondary.”—A Mysterious World
Until recently a somewhat forgotten figure of the New Argentine Cinema, director Rodrigo Moreno has, with The Delinquents, asserted himself as perhaps that movement’s most underestimated talent. Moreno’s first narrative film in nine years is several times more ambitious than anything the 51-year-old filmmaker has yet ventured, a work as sprawling and serpentine as his previous features were compact and unassuming. Just as telling, it’s a grand embrace of fiction following what seemed to be a slow, perhaps unconscious retreat from narrative storytelling.
The director’s two most recent features, the docu-fiction hybrid Reimon (2012) and the observational documentary A Provincial City (2017), marked a distinct tonal shift in Moreno’s work, away from both…
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Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 97 - Winter 2024