Burnt Money (2000), directed by Marcelo Piñeyro and based on Ricardo Piglia’s novel of the same name, brought us one of the most significant yet problematic cinematic representations of affective and erotic relationships between men in Latin American cinema. Set in the 1960s, the film depicts a violent bank robbery in Buenos Aires carried out by a gang of criminals, including Nene Brignone (Leonardo Sbaraglia) and Ángel Dorda, nicknamed “El Gaucho” (Eduardo Noriega).
What makes Burnt Money significant from a bi perspective is what it doesn’t tell us, as is common in many Latin American narratives; queerness is present but rarely named. The relationship between Nene and Ángel is intense, affectionate, physical, and central to the story, yet never labeled. This silence is part of a narrative tradition where dissidence is suggested or coded, but nothing more. As a cultural precedent, this film offers important clues for understanding how non-normative desire has been narrated within the margins of crime, passion, silence, and violence.
The story begins with the robbery of an armored truck, after which the criminals flee to Uruguay. The ensuing pursuit after the robbery culminates in a dramatic standoff where the protagonists are cornered in a Montevideo apartment and confront police for over 15 hours. In reality, these bursts of violence serve as the backdrop for a profound exploration of the relationships between the main characters.
Bisexuality in Burnt Money is constructed visually. The bond between Nene and Ángel transcends criminal camaraderie, presenting us with a complex, intimate, and affective relationship between them. The film shows scenes of physical contact between them, longing gazes, and tender moments that contrast with the brutality of their criminal world: the men share beds, embrace during crises, touch each other with near-ritualistic trust, and exchange glances of unambiguous intensity.
In one of the most intimate sequences, Nene holds a naked Ángel with a mix of desire and protection as the other’s body trembles from an epileptic seizure. In another scene, before the heist, they share a moment of calm physical closeness resembling the tenderness of a couple, removed from their hostile surroundings. Director Marcelo Piñeyro uses close-ups, low-key lighting, and a soundtrack that heightens these scenes’ emotional weight. Notably, the film neither reduces their relationship to mere sexuality nor sensationalizes it, yet doesn’t frame it as a love story either. Instead, it builds an ambiguous, powerful narrative where desire between men appears as something organic and everyday, yet simultaneously laden with tragedy in its clandestine nature.
As several critics noted, the film was promoted as a markedly masculine action movie. From this, we can recognize that, in the specific context of late 1990s/early 2000s Latin American cinema, the masculinization of characters was a key narrative strategy to make acceptable — and even possible — a story where desire between men isn’t ridiculed or punished. In a cinematic and cultural context dominated by machismo, censorship and heteronormativity, this strategy of showing without declaring can be understood as narrative resistance and could also be called a survival strategy. While today we demand more explicit, diverse, and liberated representations, we mustn’t forget that for a long time, this way of coding queerness was the only possible way to tell our stories.
Director Marcelo Piñeyro balances these emotional dimensions with representations of the criminal world without resorting to stereotypes. Renown noir writers Fernando Marías and Marcelo Luján note, this is a film of “great force and muscle” that works as a hypermasculine action movie. This combination is important for bi representation, as it challenges traditional associations between homoerotic desire and femininity. It’s an action story, not a romantic drama. Nene’s relationship with Giselle (Leticia Brédice), a prostitute with whom he forms an affective bond, complements his connection to Ángel without framing them as contradictory. This narrative construction offers a bi representation not as an identity split between attraction to men and women, but as a fluid affective experience.
In this sense, one of the film’s achievements lies in integrating the characters’ sexuality into the story without making it the central plot axis, treating it as just another trait of the protagonists — perhaps a bold move toward normalization: by showing that desire between men needs no justification or label to be valid or real.
The film won the 2001 Goya Award for Best Spanish-Language Foreign Film and was praised for its dramatic intensity and performances. Something similar happened in 2001 with Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También, which won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Language Film. However, discussions about Burnt Money ‘s characters’ sexuality were at the time overshadowed by analyses of violence and its crime genre elements.
Over twenty years after its release, Burnt Money remains crucial regarding bi representation in Latin American cinema. Its greatest achievement isn’t offering clear identity narratives or raising banners, but showing that bisexuality in cinema — even Latin American cinema — is a constant.