Money talks.

Filmmaker Marcelo Pineyro talks about defying the Argentine censors with the scorching gay heist film Burnt Money

Argentine film director Marcelo Pineyro had no idea what he was getting into last year when he made Burnt Money, a fact-based film about two gay lovers involved in a disastrous robbery. Although there is very little censorship in Argentina today, the local film classification board created a new rating for it. "They said that nobody under 18 could be admitted and decreed that it must never be shown on television," says Pineyro, still incensed at the decision. "When we asked them their reasons, they said that the film doesn't condemn the subjects enough for what they do, in particular the homosexual relationship." When Pineyro and his producers appealed the decision as unconstitutional, they were turned down three times--although on subsequent occasions, the film board did not repeat its original objections.

Argentina, of course, has always been a conservative, Roman Catholic society. Even today, says Pineyro, gay men struggle to overcome prejudices that linger from the last dictatorship (1976-1983), when they were more harshly repressed than political offenders.

Burnt Money (a.k.a. Plata Quemada) is set in 1965, when society was at its most repressive. Recreating real-life events that took place in Buenos Aires and in Montevideo, Uruguay, it tells the story of a heist that goes wrong when the thieves gun down three policemen. They flee to Uruguay, where they are systematically hunted down and finally cornered in an apartment building, where an explosive gunfight ensues.

The film focuses squarely on the passionate, often dysfunctional love between the two trigger-happy male lovers in the gang--Angel, a Spanish immigrant with severe schizophrenia, and Nene, a middle-class jailbird. Playing Angel is Eduardo Noriega, a hot Spanish actor famous for Alejandro Amenabar's Open Your Eyes. (Tom Cruise plays his part in the upcoming U.S. remake, Vanilla Sky.) Argentine heartthrob Leonardo Sbaraglia is cast as Nene. The sexy duo generate not inconsiderable heat together, even as Angel's mental illness gets the better of him and Nene looks elsewhere--to other men and women--for sexual gratification.

Pineyro says the actors are both straight, but that it was central to the film that they manage to convey the characters' almost obsessive love for each other. "They are very good actors, and we worked hard in rehearsals to construct the relationship and the desire," he says. "It was very important to show the desire they feel and the final redemption they find in their love." Meanwhile, he decided to use the tango, a symbol of heterosexual Latin machismo, as the theme music to his drama. "When the tango first came into existence, it was danced by immigrant men together at the end of the 19th century. It later evolved into a dance between men and women, of course, and is used as a stereotype of heterosexuality. I wanted to subvert these stereotypes. The dance is a facade, and what is underneath is good material to work with."

While a small faction of the Argentine press supported Pineyro in his fight against the film's censors, he says most objected to the film. "It's funny," he says. "We have gay porn channels here and gay movies front other countries playing here, but I think as an Argentinean film, they just found Burnt Money too subversive."

BURNT MONEY (PLATA QUEMADA) * Directed and cowritten by Marcelo Pineyro * Starring Eduardo Noriega and Leonardo Sbaraglia * Strand Releasing * October 5 (N.Y.)

Goodridge is U.S. editor for Screen International.