Border, 2018.
Directed by Ali Abbasi.
Starring Eva Melander, Eero Milonoff, Jörgen Thorsson, Ann Petrén, Sten Ljunggren, Kjell Wilhelmsen, and Matti Boustedt.
SYNOPSIS:
A customs officer who can smell fear develops an unusual attraction to a strange traveler while aiding a police investigation, which will call into question her entire existence.
Border opens with Tina, a Swedish customs officer who possesses an uncanny ability to detect contraband that passengers attempt to smuggle into the country. Early on, we see Tina stop a man transporting a USB stick of child pornography. When questioned by her superiors, Tina likens her intuitiveness to a sense of smell. Like everything else in Border, Tina feels odd in a way that’s hard to pin down but creeps up and finally takes shape as the film doles out information one splinter at a time. The makeup applied to Tina augments her strangeness, without ever feeling like latex. As Tina, Eva Melander delivers a truly strong performance, that comes off as matter-of-fact, vivid, and affecting.
Physically, Tina looks different from the people who cycle through customs. One disgruntled passerby calls her “ugly,” but it’s unclear what her unique look means until she runs into Vor (Eero Milonoff ) – a stranger who Tina experiences an immediate connection with. Long story short, both Tina and Vor are trolls (in the folkloric sense) whose true nature was hidden from them by their adopted families. In the 1970s, the Swedish government carried out experiments, separating Tina from her parents, surgically removing her tail, and remanding her to the care of her now ailing stepfather. Tina asks Vor to stay on her property as a tenant and the two begin to engage in a romance of sorts. However, Border takes the relationship of its two leads in startling, at times disturbing, directions.
Based on the short story Grans by John Ajvide Lindqvist (who wrote both the book and film versions of Let the Right One In), and with a screenplay by Lindqvist, Abbasi, and Isabella Eklöf, Border goes full bore into fantasy as it progresses. But Abbasi and the writers never forsake the realistic elements, nor does the supernatural offer a fanciful escape, quite the opposite. At moments, the audience laughed with the film, which is not devoid of humorous beats; other times, I heard titters of either uncertainty or discomfort – there’s a thoroughly unique sex-scene that punctuates the second half of the film. Border doesn’t set out to subvert the folkloric tropes, but it uses them, enriching and adding to what we already know.
While Border shares certain elements with Let the Right One In (the central romance follows several of the same beats) it also stands on its own as an exceptional fantasy/drama/police procedural with tinges of horror. The writers, director, and cast mix these disparate tones adroitly. An eerie, swaying, propulsive score by Christoffer Berg and Martin Dirkov provides a through line. The cinematography by Nadin Carlsen lends an otherworldly undercurrent to the proceedings, even before things turn explicitly supernatural.
In the end, Border somehow comes together as a cohesive whole, presenting old ideas in a new context. The romantic elements turn in unexpected directions, as do the procedural and mystery strands. I highly recommend Border. It stands alongside other great fantasies set within the context of the real world, such as Let the Right One In, Pan’s Labyrinth, and American Gods.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Sam Kitagawa
