The Nine Queens

[Michele Firmasyah]

Meand a friend decided to try and get nine queens and still not checkmate the opposing king. I decided to top it off with a stalemate instead of a checkmate because I thought it'd look funnier if the king doesn't have anywhere to go.

Fabian Bielinsky's "Nine Queens" is a con within a con within a con. There comes a time when we think we've gotten to the bottom, and then the floor gets pulled out again and we fall another level. Since nothing is as it seems (it doesn't even seem as it seems), watching the film is like observing a chess game in which all of the pieces are in plain view but one player has figured out a way to cheat. "David Mamet might kill for a script as good," Todd McCarthy writes in Variety. True, although Mamet might also reasonably claim to have inspired it; the set-up owes something to his "House of Games," although familiarity with that film will not help you figure out this one.

The film starts with a seemingly chance meeting. Indeed, almost everything in the film is "seemingly." A young would-be con man named Juan (Gaston Pauls) is doing the $20 bill switch with a naive cashier--the switch I have never been able to figure out, where you end up with $39 while seemingly doing the cashier a favor. Juan succeeds. The cashier goes off duty. Juan is greedy and tries the same trick on her replacement. The first cashier comes back with the manager, screaming that she was robbed. At this point Marcos (Ricardo Darin), a stranger in the store, flashes his gun, identifies himself as a cop, arrests the thief and hauls him off.

Of course Marcos is only seemingly a cop. He lectures Juan on the dangers of excessive greed and buys him breakfast, and then the two of them seemingly happen upon an opportunity to pull a big swindle involving the "nine queens," a rare sheet of stamps. This happens when Valeria (Leticia Bredice), seemingly Marcos' sister, berates him because one of his old criminal associates tried to con a client in the hotel where she seemingly works. The old con seemingly had a heart attack, and now the field is seemingly open for Marcos and Juan to bilk the seemingly rich and drunk Gandolfo (Ignasi Abadal).

Now before you think I've given away the game with all those "seeminglys," let me point out that they may only seemingly be seeminglys. They may in fact be as they seem. Or seemingly otherwise. As Juan and Marcos try to work out their scheme, which involves counterfeit stamps, we wonder if in fact the whole game may be a pigeon drop with Juan as the pigeon. But, no, the fake stamps are stolen, seemingly by complete strangers, requiring Marcos and Juan to try to con the owner of the real nine queens out of stamps they can sell Gandolfo. (Since they have no plans to really pay for these stamps, their profit would be the same in either case.) And on and on, around and around, in an elegant and sly deadpan comedy. A plot, however clever, is only the clockwork; what matters is what kind of time a movie tells. "Nine Queens" is blessed with a gallery of well-drawn character roles, including the alcoholic mark and his two bodyguards; the avaricious widow who owns the "nine queens" and her much younger bleached-blond boyfriend, and Valeria the sister, who opposes Marcos' seamy friends and life of crime but might be willing to sleep with Gandolfo if she can share in the spoils.

Juan meanwhile falls for Valeria himself, and then there are perfectly timed hiccups in the plot where the characters (and we) apparently see through a deception, only to find that deeper reality explains everything--maybe. The story plays out in modern-day Buenos Aires, a city that looks sometimes Latin, sometimes American, sometimes Spanish, sometimes German, sometimes modern, sometimes ancient. Is it possible the city itself is pulling a con on its inhabitants, and that some underlying reality will deceive everyone? The ultimate joke of course would be if the Argentine economy collapsed, so that everyone's gains, ill-gotten or not, would evaporate. But that is surely too much to hope for.

Note: "Nine Queens" is like a South American version of "Stolen Summer," the movie that won the contest sponsored by HBO, Miramax, and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. According to Variety, some 350 screenplays were submitted in an Argentine competition, Bielinsky's won, and he was given funds to film. It's illuminating that in both cases such competitions yielded more literate and interesting screenplays than the studios are usually able to find through their own best efforts.

That said, thanks to Martin, I have now achieved something I have never actually managed in a proper game before. Winning with nine Queens. The starting one, and eight pawn promotions. There are two major obstacles to this, even when facing an opponent like Martin:

Marking the debut of Argentinian writer-director Fabien Bielinsky, Nine Queens belongs to a rich tradition of films about con artists that includes Peter Bogdanovich's brilliant Paper Moon, Stephen Frears' The Grifters and pretty much every movie David Mamet has ever made.

The film is set in present-day Buenos Aires, but it could be anywhere, as the action mostly takes place in hotels, restaurants, cafes and convenience stores. Bielinsky sets the tone of the film right from the opening scene, with Juan's small-time con-artist getting greedy by trying to pull the same 'change' trick on successive cashiers in the same store, and Marcos' older, wiser grifter stepping in to rescue him by posing as a policeman.

From then on, the script delights in piling on the twists so that the audience is never sure whom to trust and is immediately suspicious of each new character and their motives. Indeed, much of the pleasure of the film is derived from the fact that, time and time again, just as you think you've figured it out, something happens that forces you to completely re-think your theory. And, sure enough, the film keeps you guessing right up until the end.

Bielinsky cleverly ensures that neither angel-faced Juan nor the vaguely saturnine Marcos are entirely likeable characters (Marcos in particular isn't above pimping out his own sister in order to clinch a deal), though both Gaston Pauls and Ricardo Daren give immensely charismatic and assured performances.

There's also good support from Leticia Bredice as Marcos' embittered sister (who has her own reasons for getting involved with the latest scam), and Ignasi Abadal as a particularly sleazy stamp-collector.

Nine neighborhoods in Queens were among the top 50 in most expensive median sale prices across New York City during the second quarter of 2024, according to a report by the real estate agency PropertyShark.

After not having a single sale in the second quarter of 2023, Belle Harbor rocketed to 32nd place in median sale price this year, at $1.05 million. Still, the eight total sales were the third-fewest among neighborhoods on the list and the fewest among Queens neighborhoods.

The Ditmars-Steinway neighborhood experienced decreases in median price and number of sales but still ranked 43rd on the list. The price dropped from $986,000 last year to $930,000 this year, while sales fell from ten to nine.

The borough of Queens? It's the most ethnically diverse place on earth.

A mega-diffusive ode to succulent tuberose, paired with come-hither topnotes and velvety basenotes. So feminine.

Notes: Bergamot, Cardamom, Blackberry, Tuberose, Champaca Flower, Osmanthus, Sandalwood, Benzoin Resin, Musk and Amber

A total of nine members of the Del Rio High Queens volleyball team were placed on the District 30-6A All-District athletic and academic teams. Four of the girls pulled double duty, earning honors on both teams.

9 Queens is a 501c3, nonprofit organization dedicated to empowerment through chess. Founded by Jennifer Shahade and Jean Hoffman in 2008, 9 Queens offers a range of free chess programs and workshops in Tucson, Arizona.

In chess, the queen is the most powerful piece on the board. Although every player begins the game with only one queen, every pawn has the potential to become a queen. In theory, it is possible to transform all 8 pawns into queens, thus creating a position in which there are 9 queens on the board. 9 Queens is a metaphor for the all too often unrealized capacity to empower all children through chess.

9 Queens is dedicated to empowering individuals and communities through chess by making the game fun, exciting, and accessible. We offer free chess education programs specifically designed to promote critical thinking skills, academic performance, and self-confidence. Our mission is to use chess as a tool to motivate, empower, and engage under-served and under-represented populations to realize their potential and achieve academic and personal success.

CHARLOTTE, N.C.- Women's Lacrosse snaps a nine-game slide today with a convincing 17-11 win over Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, N.C. Brittany Philip (Painted Post, N.Y., East) and Amanda Martin (Geneva, N.Y. , Geneva) each scored four for the Royals in the win.

The Royals thwarted the Bobcats comeback with back-to-back goals from Philip and Duffey that came 26 seconds apart. The Royals goals slowed down the game and held the Bobcats to two goals in the next five minutes. Kelly Wrightson (Germantown, Md., Damascus ) started a three-goal run for Queens, all within one minute of play.

Cooperation in nature is usually between relatives, but unrelated individuals can also cooperate, requiring significant benefits to outweigh the costs of helping non-kin. Unrelated queens of the ant, Pogonomyrmex californicus, work together to found a new colony, a phenomenon known as pleometrosis. While previous studies have shown that pleometrosis improves queen survival and worker production, little is known of the behavioral interactions within nests that explain these advantages. We aimed to determine how the optimal group size for a small, simple social group is related to group productivity and the organization of work. Collecting queens from a known pleometrotic population, we established nests with either one, three, six, or nine foundresses and observed the resulting nascent colonies for 50 days. We found that queens in social founding groups survived longer and had higher productivity. While all social groups were equally successful in producing workers, intermediate-sized groups were most successful in terms of per capita production. Inactivity increased with group size. In addition, the proportion of essential colony growth tasks performed (such as foraging and brood care) was lowest in both solitary-founded groups and in groups of nine queens. As a result, intermediate sized groups outperformed both solitary queens and groups of nine in the efficiency with which they converted eggs into workers. These results emphasize the benefits of cooperation and the ways in which group size can influence fitness and the allocation of labor in social groups.

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