A Badge, As License To Break The Law
There are no crusading moralists to clean up the mess in 'El Bonaerense,' Pablo Trapero's grim, dispassionate drama of police corruption, set mostly in contemporary Buenos Aires. This powerful sweat-stained swatch of Argentine neo-realism, filmed in harsh high contrast that throws its characters' faces into deep shadow, follows the initiation of Zapa (Jorge Román), a naïve police recruit, into a labyrinth of sleaze.
As Zapa is about to begin his police training, his grinning commanding officer welcomes him to 'El Bonaerense,' then adds this sarcastic afterthought: 'God help you!' (El Bonaerense is a pun that refers to a rural resident of Buenos Aires province, but is also slang for a member of the Buenos Aires police force.)
Innocent as he seems, Zapa is no angel. A locksmith from a rural shantytown, he is left holding the bag after his boss, Polaco (Hugo Anganuzzi), eggs him into taking part in a safecracking caper that fails. Zapa is saved from prison through the intercession of his Uncle Ismael (Roberto Posse), a well-connected former local police chief, who arranges Zapa's abrupt career switch from locksmith to urban lawman.
From the outset the rules are casually bent. At 32, Zapa is technically too old to qualify for the police academy, but he is allowed to pass for 28. At the academy, where he discovers leniency given to officers who commit 'unintentional homicide,' Zapa is a slow but diligent learner. When his handiness as a locksmith attracts the attention of the precinct's boss, Deputy Inspector Gallo (Dario Levy), he finds himself on the fast track to a promotion.
Zapa allows himself to become Gallo's bagman, extorting cash payments from local businesses, including a brothel. He also incites the envy of fellow officers by beginning an affair with Mabel (Mimí Arduh), an attractive, hard-boiled police instructor who begins to pull away from him when he sinks too deeply into corruption.
Except in his steamy grapplings with Mabel, Zapa betrays little emotion. He accepts the corruption around him with a poker-faced resignation. Because the movie sees the world through his eyes, the outrageous behavior that enmeshes him passes without comment. The story proceeds as a series of loosely connected cinéma-vérité-style anecdotes that show Zapa involved in compromising situations. We see criminal suspects kicked and beaten (and sometimes shot) for sport by police officers who have no visible twinges of conscience.
'El Bonaerense,' which opens today at the Film Forum in New York, is all the more disturbing for refusing to act as an exposé. It just throws up its hands and says that this is the way it is. And its pointed detachment lends certain scenes an almost farcical sense of the absurd. The funniest and one of the scariest is a holiday party in which the drunk, trigger-happy officers go crazy firing their guns into the air. The celebration suggests a children's game of cops and robbers in which the toy firearms happen to be real.
Think of 'El Bonaerense' as an Argentine 'Training Day,' in which the evil under examination is so routine that it's not about to be uprooted anytime soon.
EL BONAERENSE
Written (in Spanish, with English subtitles), produced and directed by Pablo Trapero; director of photography, Guillermo Nieto; edited by Nicolás Goldbart; music by Pablo Lescano and Damas Gratis; production designer, Sebastian Roses; released by Menemsha Films. At the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Sixth Avenue, South Village. Running time: 100 minutes. This film is not rated.
WITH: Jorge Román (Zapa), Dario Levy (Deputy Inspector Gallo), Mimí Arduh (Mabel), Hugo Anganuzzi (Polaco), Victor Hugo Carrizo (Inspector Molinari), Graciana Chironi (Zapa's Mother) and Roberto Posse (Uncle Ismael).
FILM REVIEW