Ali Abbasi’s Border could be one of the most bonkers films of the festival so far. It is certainly surprising and difficult to write about without giving too much away. Whatever else it is, it is unmissable.
The story revolves around Tina (Eva Melander), an odd-looking woman – think the Beast in the Beauty and the Beast 1980s TV show – who works as a border guard at a ferry port in Sweden. We first see her playing with an insect outside work. Tina looks a little unusual and she has an unusual talent: that of sniffing out miscreants. We see her nose twitching and it’s only a matter of time before she reveals what the perp has been smuggling in. Her animal-like traits are evident when she arrives home. Rather than putting on boots to go for a walk, we watch her traipsing through the wood, mulching down the moss with her bare feet. Animals are attracted to her and it’s clear there is more than a simple affinity with nature as we watch her swimming naked with her hairy butt and a strange scar at the base of her spine on show.
Tina does not live alone; she shares her rural home with Roland (Jörgen Thorsson), a long-haired slacker who breeds Rottweilers. He is abusing her hospitality, but she is happy not to be alone. She is also on friendly terms with her neighbours and she has a seemingly loving relationship with her dad who is ensconced in a nursing home. So she is not such a sad outsider as she first appears.
Then along comes Vore (Eero Milonoff). She sniffs him out at the port and discovers an unusual array of items in his luggage, including a jar of worms and a larvae incubator. But she catches a whiff of something more: Vore looks like a more feral version of herself and there is an attraction between them. When Vore eventually arrives at Tina’s, it is interesting that nobody mentions their likeness. Instead, Roland and their neighbours are perturbed, if not downright scared, of this strange man in their midst. So maybe Vore and Tina are not so similar after all and maybe Roland is better at sniffing out malefactors than his platonic partner…
Abbasi’s film is based on a short story, which he has adapted and broadened to include a gang of wrongdoers that Tina is called upon to help investigate. As she does so, her relationship with Vore develops and we witness a remarkable sex scene between them. In fact, there is a lot that is remarkable about this film, not least its elements of Scandinavian folklore and some very funny Swedish humour, occasionally at the expense of the neighbouring Finns. The leads are fantastic, as is Thorsson as the hapless Roland. Characters are rarely what they seem and are full of surprises, much like the film itself. It is part fairytale, part thriller, part ode to nature and part romantic comedy, which all add up to an entertaining and fascinating film. And at its heart is the important question of what it means to be human and to connect with the world around us.
