A little boy comes from a lift along an underground passageway, his hand held by his parent, as if taking him to school. The hand is released and he boards a train, his face mildly enquiring and innocent. A woman tries to take a wallet from a man's pocket. He's a police officer and snaps a handcuff on her. She's taken from the train, and turns briefly to look at the boy as she is led away. He gazes at her as he continues on the train, waves. It's his mother, and he is her conspirator. This segment of the film is shown in blue and white, and is matched by a segment in the same colours at the end.

The film moves into the present. The boy is Álex (Juan José Ballesta), 17 or so and on his first day out of orphanage, trying to find what became of his mother. He gets work as assistant to a hairdresser (Carlos Kaniowsky). He looks for his mother Ana (María Ballesteros) at her room in the basement of a boarding house. There's no reply and the landlord arrives saying that she's gone away with rent unpaid. Álex lies that she's told him to bring money, and moves into the room. In a shop he watches as a girl his age tries to steal a CD and gets picked up by the store's cameras. He brushes past her and steals the CD from her without her realising, protecting her from the baffled guard, who stops her and finds she has nothing. She's Sara (María Valverde) and Álex, drawn to her, follows her to her middle-class home. He offers to train her as a thief and she gradually accepts.

Álex knows that an elderly antique dealer (Patrick Bauchau) is a handler of stolen goods who was used by his mother. Álex describes her: Romanian, brunette, 30s. The dealer pretends he doesn't know her - all Roma, gypsies, are the same to him, he says. Álex realises that to steal is the way to obtain information from him. He resists stealing at work, but steals with Sara. Stealing on his own, he is confronted by another gang of thieves and fights them. They say they'll kill him. Eventually he steals at work and gets fired. Sara and Álex have sex and a kind of love. They get caught stealing - a commission for the antique dealer - and released, but not before the police tell Álex he was put into care because his mother renounced custody of him, which he finds heartbreaking. Álex persuades the dealer to take him to his mother. She's a prostitute. Horrified - he's turned her into a symbol of goodness in his mind, as if a deity - he disintegrates. Sara looks for him, and follows him to a train, stealing to reanimate his love; but he parts from her, leaving the train and symbolically renouncing thieving. As he leaves, he turns back to her in an echo of his mother's pose at the start. Climbing the stair he is stabbed by the gang. He dies on a bench, and becomes the boy again, completing the journey he was unable to as a child. His mother waits for him, shrouded in light in the lift, and he regains her hand, as if she is taking him to heaven.

Ladrones is partly about the plot itself, but mainly about the relationships within that story, and particularly the means of expressing closeness. It's told by graceful dialogue and the intense moods created by David Azcano's photography and Juan Botella's art direction. Centrally, it is Álex's longing to find his place in the world. He has learnt as a child that the basic partnership is the cooperation of two people in theft. One person steals the wallet, passes it to the other person, and remains, empty-handed, while the other gets away. Money is shared 50-50. If one is caught, each person is independent - there is no going back for the other. And everything can be lied about. The concept of love he has learnt from his mother is that stealing is its currency. To steal with someone is a type of love. A relationship must be based on being severed by circumstance. His mother was taken away in the act of stealing. His mother renounced him.

He is attracted to Sara, but can only develop and express that by stealing with her. Their stealing is intensely erotic - he nuzzles a stolen wallet against her fingers to tempt her from her boyfriend Jorge (Erik Probanza) in a way that's like foreplay. Sara is - at first - drawn to the stealing as much as to him. He's too shy to kiss her - he's not familiar with how to show love to her as a woman. It's only when he's begun to try and dismantle the code of stealing he's learnt by running to rescue Sara when she's caught, that he's able to respond as a man to her desire and invitation as a woman and take her sexually. Even then, when she offers him a normal relationship, he must revert to theft. It's all he knows. It's only when his mother breaks his illusions that he is able to destroy the false concept of love which his mother created in him.

Sara's story is different. She's a university student from a fairly affluent family, finding her place in the world too, but from a secure background. Her attraction to Álex is perhaps partly of his different class, though that's not made explicit. Certainly she's attracted to the risk, to the things she can obtain without paying, and to the levels of skill the trade requires. She's imaginative, and ready to put her own creativity into their roles as thieves. She's aware of and attracted to the dangerous nature of their relationship, and to Álex himself in a conventionally sexual and emotional way. It's implied towards the end, when she tries to find him, that this may be evolving into a stronger love.

The relationship between Álex and his mother Ana is evoked in her room and the way it is filmed. It's a basement with high obscured-glass windows at pavement level. Through these he sees a couple embrace - presenting him with the mystery of man-woman love. A woman pauses and looks in. He races outside, but she's gone. Ana? Sara? The room has rats, an icon of the Madonna, a tailor's dummy which he uses for theft practice, wind chimes, bed, curtains. He fills the rooms with candles, with many forming a shrine to the Madonna. His mother and he wear matching pendants of the cross. The revelation that the person he has worshipped is a prostitute is appalling to Álex, but it is also his release. He no longer has to base the way he sees the world on her. Equally, there is no structure left. Before going to his own death, he sets fire to the room, destroying what symbolises the foundation of his past.

Director Jaime Marques is also, with Enrique López Lavigne and Juan Ibáñez, the writer. It's a powerful story, with Juan José Ballesta's remarkable delivery of Álex as its lynchpin, and María Valverde's equally intense and gifted performance as Sara as its equal. They make gorgeous-looking lovers, pretty, elegant, stylish, with soft faces able to show the subtlest nuances of emotion. Their touches, their looks at each other, the choreography of their stealing movements, are the centre of the film's power. Both provide the means by which the intense emotion of this sad and moving story is brought to life.

Editor Iván Aledo cuts with a profound understanding of the moods of the scenes, allowing them to build and release with the flow of the story. Federico Jusid's original music is a powerful component of the film, though the opening score with ponderous opera vocal is a bit overpowering - and the opening scene certainly goes on too long. It's in slow motion too, and, taken together with the blue-and-white colouring, it suggests that the film is going to be pretentious and unintelligible. This is a shame because it is anything but. Costume designer Fernando García gets some really lovely looks that work precisely. Sara's and Álex's clothes feel exactly right, and the costumes for an art exhibition in the middle, and a cheap department store at the start, are all perfect. Make-up by Yolanda Piña is superb - Sara and Álex's faces in particular, and also Ana as a time-ravaged prostitute, and her work on the antique dealer's face. There is some fabulous Steadicam work by Gorka Rotaetxe - in the underground, and following the lovers.

It is the fundamental understanding of what the story is, by director Jaime Marques, that gives the film its collossal emotional punch. It is an immensely distressing film. There are funny and moving episodes throughout. But there is such sadness in poor Álex's story - the loss of love for the child is so affecting, and his alone-ness so unbroachable - that tears seem the only reply.

Cast (alpha order): Juan José Ballesta - Thief (Álex). María Ballesteros - Mother (Ana). Patrick Bauchau - Antique Dealer . Carlos Kaniowsky - Hairdresser. Carlos Kaniowsky - Hairdresser. Erik Probanza - Jorge (Sara’s boyfriend). María Valverde - Thief (Sara). (Credits source: producer's notes (and IMDB) 5 October 07)

Company & Crew: Director - Jaime Marques. Writer (Story) - Jaime Marques, Enrique López Lavigne. Writer (Screenplay) - Jaime Marques, Juan Ibáñez. Producer - José Ibáñez, Antonio Pérez.. Executive Producer - José Ibáñez. Delegate Producer - Belen Atienza, Eneko Lizarraga. Director of Photography - David Azcano. Line Producer – Luis Gutiérrez. Film Editor - Iván Aledo. Original Music - Federico Jusid. Art Director - Juan Botella. Sound - Wildtrack. Costume Designer - Fernando García. Make Up - Yolanda Piña. First Assistant Director - Walter Prieto. Camera Operator - David Azcano. Assistant Camera - Patricia Charlin. Video Assistant - Pilar Sanchez Diaz. Still Photographer - Fernando Marrero. Steadicam Operator - Gorka Rotaetxe. First Assistant Camera - Marta V García. Production Companies - Estudios Picasso, Maestranza Films, Pentagrama Films. (Credits source: producer's notes (and IMDB) 5 October 07)

IMDB Credits: www.imdb.com/title/tt0815457/

END

John Park

reviewed Friday 5 October 07 / National Film Theatre - NFT3 - Press Preview - 13:00

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2008