Leticia Brédice

When Nine Queens (2000) turns towards Leticia Brédice, the next ingenious fraud becomes less urgent. Ricardo Darín and Gastón Pauls make the dishonesty entertaining, but her Valéria gives us someone worth watching even without a puzzle to solve. We were pleased whenever attention turned her way, because she stopped us inspecting every character merely for evidence of a trick. In Fabián Bielinsky's film, she has enough force to compete with both men. We wished he had given her more.

Marcelo Piñeyro was the director of her breakthrough lead in Cenizas del paraíso (1997), and became a recurring collaborator. She played Giselle for him in Burnt Money (2000), then a teacher in Kamchatka (2002). The early films gave her both leading and supporting work; it would be a mistake to equate her forcefulness with a need for the largest part. Valéria is a supporting role, yet we would gladly watch her away from the con men's business.

Later film work includes Josefina in Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro (2009). Television gave her the calculating Verónica San Martín in El elegido (2011), a character consistent with her frequent casting in forceful, morally ambiguous parts. Such casting is understandable; it also risks making a strong personality the only thing a part asks her to supply. We would rather see directors give her something less predictable to work with than keep relying on that intensity. The attraction in Nine Queens is the individual character she makes us want to follow.

Our caveat about Nine Queens concerns the plotting, which occasionally strains belief, rather than anything Brédice fails to provide. She helps a clever thriller stay enjoyable when we start noticing how hard it is working. That is a good reason to seek out an actor, even if the film cannot make quite enough space for her. Start with Bielinsky's film, and do not spend the whole evening trying to outguess it.