Of lovebirds, chargrin and knockouts

This is a movie that you will want to see twice. First, to take in all that is happening, savour it, enjoy con upon con, and the looks of the perpetuators and their victims. Second, to actually begin to make sense of what is really happening—who is conning who, how, when and with what consequences. It would also help to see it even a third time, because then you might have developed some comprehension of what people are saying. This isn’t easy, even for an American. This is a film that really merits sub-titles—they only appear when Arabic is being translated.

There are in American Hustle many patterns of speech: a cultured British accent, in this case spoken by Sydney Prosser when she poses as Lady Edith Greenleigh (acted magnificently by Amy Adams as a fiery bright red head), who as her real self has more of a southwest crispness; and a guttural-nasal Bronx accent that belongs to Irving Rosenfeld (played with suave and determination by the amazing Christian Bale, now distancing himself from his role as the masked-winged-Chiroptera-man crusader).