Author: Devika Girish (Film Comment)
Translator: csh
The translation was first published in "Iris"
As the heroine of Ali Abasi's second feature film "Frontier", Tina seems a little weird: her angular face, sunken eye sockets, and flat teeth have caused malicious slanders from many strangers. She is a customs officer and works in a remote forest area in Sweden. She has an X-Men superpower that can smell the intentions of others with her nose. For customs security, this talent is Priceless; but like all the strange abilities in movies, it creates a sense of alienation from others. Tina finally found out that all of this was related to her true identity—in fact, she was a mountain spirit. She is one of the only surviving descendants of this supernatural race, who were persecuted and slaughtered by humans decades ago.
The very ambitious theme selection of this film constitutes an allegory of social and cultural issues in recent years, touching on the oppression of immigrants and the exclusion of ethnic and sexual minorities. However, "Frontier" did not flow into artificial symbolism or direct comments on political issues. It depicts the special and moving private experience that drifts between the boundaries of society and among different groups of people-it also penetrates into the hearts of those from the Lost Lands, and outlines the sense of fear. ("I don't like people who can't express what they want without metaphors," Abbas said in a recent interview with "Film Review", emphasizing that the film is a "lonely, love-seeking woman" The story, but she happens to have a good sense of smell.”) This is a film that is difficult to classify. It combines the characteristics of myths and fantasy, love stories, and crime types. "Frontier" may be more like a queer movie: especially when we see the way it handles desire. The film sees desire as some kind of cosmic power, which awakens Tina's true self.
"Frontier" starts with scenes from Tina's daily life: a boring, programmed life, even the most amazing part of her life-her superhuman sense of smell-is only praised as a kind of "metal detection" Device". She was wearing a uniform and standing in the aseptic passage of the customs. As she used her nose to smell the scent of passing passengers, her nose twitched. First, she found an underage alcoholic, and then a well-dressed child pornography smuggler. Later, when she went home, we saw Roland (a stupid character played by Jorgen Torsson) with her silly and idle boyfriend. She would also go to a nursing home to do her part regularly and visit her father who was almost aging. In their gentle communication, we gradually felt the latent melancholy: Maybe she is gradually losing this old man, and he may be the only person in the world who truly loves her.
In Tina's "normality", we can experience a certain unnatural and suppressed feeling. To some extent, those who do not belong to a certain culture, but have to force themselves to live in it, may be familiar with this feeling. Thanks to Melander's profound insights and wonderful performances, who have experienced everything contained in this role, making Tina feel like an uneasy and silent observer of the world in the process of reluctantly struggling. She will never be satisfied, but she cannot know what she has lost. The only moment she showed vitality was when she stumbled upon that natural realm. In that scene, photographer Nadim Carlson created a vivid and beautiful color combination and image texture. Tina was standing somewhere outside her cabin, peeping at the scene inside her house like a visitor. At this moment, a huge elk quietly appeared on her shoulder. Then she woke up suddenly in the middle of the night. Outside the frosty window in her bedroom, a fox was sharing this warm and weird moment with her. In these scenes, Abbasi and Carlson are mining their folk mythology in the forests of Northern Europe. We see the shape of things emerge from the shadows, and finally disappear into the darkness.
Tina cautiously accepted this encounter, but they looked like her own alien after all—until one day, while working in customs, she met Wall (played by Eero Mironov), his face It seems to have many of the same characteristics as her. His arrival clearly disrupted Tina's life; her olfactory superpowers led her to an extremely frantic mood, and Melander was framed in a close-up that pierced people's hearts. Suddenly startled and awakened, Tina decided to explore further, and she even discovered more common points between them: hermaphrodite sexual organs; a scar on the top of the hip; the burn after being struck by lightning. "Who are you?" she asked. This quietly became her prelude to another question from now on: "Who am I?"
Their ensuing love affair inherited the basic structure of many growing up movies, whether it’s queer movies or other movies: Wall is an unscrupulous but incredible lover, he will still be shy and unworldly. Tina pulled out of her safe zone, allowing her to know herself. However, Abasi's attention to fictional details, and of course the appearance of Melander and Milonov between human and inhuman, makes the scene between these two characters particularly charming and original. The initial communication between them was through the sense of smell, quietly falling into ecstasy; they were like animals, using their noses to "examine" each other and approach each other cautiously. Slowly, Wall gradually introduced Tina into her natural impulse. He first gave her maggots to eat. ("It's disgusting," she said, "Who said that?" He said contemptuously.) Soon after, they were huddled together under the table in a thunderstorm, tangled together, trying to escape the lightning that chased them. . Soon, they were enjoying passionate and wild sex in the forest.
The sex scene was widely discussed after the film premiered in Cannes. That was the climax scene of "Frontier": it was a pure and apocalyptic moment of joy, which successfully awakened Tina's identification with her body and desires. It is also beyond the norm, we see oil painting-like nudes, and frequent roars and grunts. When Abbasi portrays his "other" role, this is another example: instead of anthropomorphizing the sex between them, he tried a more realistic way to reconstruct our "monster" And the usual imagination of pornography. Meland and Mironov once again essentially played the effect of this scene; they showed animalistic desires, rather than parody or attracting sympathy.
"Frontier" is adapted from a novel by John Ivid Lindquist, another famous story by this author, which is the cult film "Don't Go In" (2008). Just like "No One Who Lives In", "Frontier" also penetrates into some real dark areas, and contains a (somewhat unnatural) crime sideline plot. This makes the mystery of the film's identity more convoluted, and it also creates a better-looking and more exciting story. Even after we discovered Tina's true body, she still faced a deeper question, which is still the question of "who is she?" and who she wants to be. "I don't want to hurt others. Is this human?" She said to Wall at the end of the movie. Abbas seems to want to imply that the proposition of identity is far more complicated than pure gender issues and genetic issues. And we set boundaries for ourselves, sometimes more important than our true qualities.
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