To Catch a Thief
A conman being outconned and outsmarted by a seemingly innocent and innocuous beautiful girl? If the premise sounds conventional, it’s because it belongs to a genre with semi-canonical rules: a caper, technically described as “an illegal plot or enterprise, especially one involving theft.”
The tag fits very well the new heist-romcom Vino para robar, Ariel Winograd’s new movie after the hilarious wedding party comedy Mi primera boda (2011). In the same manner that Mi primera boda stuck to the conventions of a genre best defined as choral pranksters’ movie, Vino para robar has all the makings of Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief (1955), which it heavily references and pays due tribute to. On the local front, Vino para robar brings to mind Fabián Bielinsky’s Nueve reinas (Nine Queens, 2000), in which two conmen try to rip off a stamp collector but, instead, end up attempting to double cross themselves.
In true heist comedy style, Vino para robar focuses on a couple of professional swindlers (Sebastián, Daniel Hendler; and Natalia, Valeria Bertuccelli) who set their eyes on the same item: an ancient Aztec mask worth millions of dollars.
Sebastián is the kind of professional conman who, in spite of his good looks and elegance, can go unnoticed in the most unlikely situations. True, every now and then he needs a disguise and some props to pass himself off as something he is not, but it is his acting skill that allows him to cheat seasoned crooks like himself.
His rival-turned-accomplice Natalia is an impersonation master capable of drawing attention away from her real intentions and interests, normally related to valuable goodies and the unsurmountable chances of getting her hands on them. The harder the better, seems to be her motto.
Both Hendler and Bertuccelli have an impressive acting range, and Vino para robar seems to have been written with them in mind. In previous films, Hendler had to avoid typecasting as a stuttering late teen to progress into mature roles, the most emblematic of them being his Luciano Gauna role in Gabriel Medina’s friendship-in-a-collision-course dramedy Los paranoicos (2008). Bertuccelli, for her part, is equally at home in drama and comedy, and although Natalia is her first role as a loveable swindler, in Vino para robar she pushes the boundaries of typecasting to create a new, fresh version of this 1950s-style classic character.
Once the scene is set (Sebastián and Natalia meeting for the first time and coming to realize that they’d better work as a team) Vino para robar moves at breakneck speed, shifting the action from a cosmopolitan city like Buenos Aires to the calm, rich but never opulent Mendoza City.
Known for its spectacular landscapes and first-rate vineyards, Mendoza is the next destination in the couple of swindlers’ mission to get hold of a rare bottle of wine sought after by a rich collector. As Sebastián and Natalia make their way to the vineyard where the precious bottle is kept in store, Vino para robar references, but never steals from, To Catch a Thief and other 1950s action-romance romps.
Further allusions: Sebastián drives a sports car reminiscent of a James Bond adventure, and Natalia occupies the passenger seat drifting off to some long gone by day when she was not a thief but just a girl willing to keep her family estate from rapacious buyers. Unknown to Sebastián, this is Natalia’s ultimate goal: not a priceless antique or fortune, but rather the more unselfish purpose of preventing her father from going out of business.
If the premise behind Vino para robar sounds conventional to the point of triteness, it’s because it is, unashamedly, enjoyably so. Director Winograd does a fine job out of this non-stop ride, even if there are some loopholes in the script, which is not as neat and tight as that of Mi primera boda.
Although pinpointing these flaws is, if not mission impossible, something close to it, truth is Vino para robar is very good in almost every department, but the action stalls at times because the scenes are not that well segued together.
Engaging and beautifully photographed, with splendid performances by the leads and the ensemble cast, Vino para robar is close, very close to the kind of product Winograd surely had in mind when choosing the narrative device, the gorgeous visuals and the intense action scenes typical of nerve-shattering action movies.
Minor flaws and all, Vino para robar (a pun on words viewers decipher only after the action gives them some respite) moves at an appropriately fast pace and provides 100 minutes of action and romance, two ingredients without which capers do not function properly.
