The "torture porn" wave in modern horror has left me mostly more disinterested than shocked and more bored than disinterested. The unique inability of the sub-genre to draw at least somewhat human characters makes the effect films like Hostel and Saw have on me predictably minor. And really, how shallow is a character when I don't even flinch when he's eviscerated?
So I didn't go into Frontier(s) with much hope when I read about it being compared to Hostel and the inevitable Haute Tension. I will spare you the deserved rant about the latter, let's just say that I hate it.
Frontier(s) is about a group of young people from the banlieues who, after having robbed a nice sum of money, are on the run from the police. To make matters worse, the banlieues themselves are in a state of de facto civil war thanks to the election of an extreme right-wing president.
But the local chaos is helpful if you want to get on your way into a more liberal country like Holland, so the gang and the pregnant sister of one/ex-girlfriend of another member Yasmine (Karina Testa), who is our designated heroine, leave Paris. On their way to freedom they make the fatal error of stopping in a country inn for the night.
As is so often the case, the inn is run by a band of inbred cannibalistic Nazis, whose belief in pure bloodlines through inbreeding and adoption of kidnapped women is interesting, to say the least.
And, well, you know how the rest of the story will go.
To my delight, the way Frontier(s) realizes its often told tale is a little different. Sure, we get the strange glossy ugliness and predominance of brown tones t-porn is known for, but we also are introduced to victims who are actual human beings we don't want to see die as they do, a very believable heroine and a surprisingly thoughtful script.
What, you say a band of raving maniacs won't build a unified front? They'll rip each other apart as fast and as easily as they do strangers?
Most interesting to me though, is the tonal difference between this and Hostel. Where the American film is a (pseudo-)realistic version of an urban myth, the French film goes the way of a dark and slightly surreal fairy tale adapted into an opera, not so much interested in the gross-out (although we see more than enough of that, thank you) as in the weird and disturbing. In this way, Frontier(s) feels a little like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
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4 comments:
I have to admit that I didn't make it through this one, because, rightly or wrongly, I found myself falling into a funk over the whole "increasing homogeneity of global pop culture" thing. The world needed a French take on the TP genre... why? Of course, my being all cantankerous old man about it perhaps made me fail to appreciate some of the nuances and political allegory that distinguish this film from its US counterparts. Still, while France's has never been among my top favorite national cinemas, I could at least always count on it to have a distinctive identity. This film, on the other hand, seemed to put a disconcerting amount of effort into cinching it's story within the conventions established by the Saw and Hostel movies -- which, as you eloquently opine, are dull to the point of mental flat-lining and certainly unworthy of having a bunch of superficially identical European stepchildren running around.
I thought of it more as of the French showing the Eli Roth's how it is done right. I almost wouldn't have made it through the whole film myself. The first half hour or so wasn't promising at all for me.
Then came a certain point when I had the feeling the brothers Grimm had just entered the building and driven out some of the torture love for a different kind of cruelty. Which was more than all right for me.
Well, see, now you're making me wish I had hung in there and watched the whole thing -- because I'm all about adopting genre conventions for the purpose of subverting them, and I love it when it's done well. I just remember at one point looking at the total running time, looking at how much I'd watched, seeing that there was still an hour to go, and thinking that life was just too short. I do have Jaani Dushman to watch, after all!
Just goes to show you have your priorities straight and are not getting distracted from the important things in life.
Like watching "Papi Gudia" and not "The Host"...
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