As for the film... it's an Argentinian heist movie about two minor criminals who concoct a plan to sell forgeries of some rare stamps (the 'nine queens' of the title; no this isn't a Bruce LaBruce movie!) to a private collector, deceiving both him and the owner of the stamps as to their value in order to walk off with a massive profit.

The two leads are pretty good, supporting cast excellent, script OK (no real plot surprises but some nice dialogue), direction patchy. The director is very good at crowded urban location sequences - in particular, a very nice sense of space is conveyed through setups and editing, especially in a scene in which the two criminals attempt a robbery in a coffee shop. He's less comfortable with dialogue scenes involving two or three people, especially in the first three reels when we are being introduced to the characters and the foundation of the plot, which seem to drag on forever. There's a very nice twist at the end which makes reference to the economic crisis in Argentina.

Most of the shooting, including the interior shots, appears to have been done on fast stock under little or no artificial light, giving the film a rather grainy feel (it reminded me of some of the location scenes in Traffic), but this suits the atmosphere fine, so no complaints there.

As usual excellent presentation at City Screen York: the show started bang on time, 10 minutes of appropriately chosen trailers, sound level just right throughout, framing adjusted for subtitles when feature started and focus carefully set for picture, not subtitles.

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