TIFF Report: FRONTIERE(S) Review
A quartet of youth on the run from the law take shelter in a remote countryside motel. Too late do they realize that the motel is staffed by a bizarre and brutal family, a family with a hunger for blood and pain, and in mere moments it becomes a struggle to survive in the place they'd hoped would be their refuge. Yes, Xavier Gens is treading very familiar ground with Frontiere(s), his debut film, and yes, just about all of this has been done before, but by god there's just so much of it here and all of it executed (pun intended) so well that the film defies any horror fans to not have a good time with it.
Set against the backdrop of race, class and political violence that has plagued Paris recently - issues that drive films as diverse as La Haine and Banlieue 13 - we are introduced to our our youthful protagonists as they use an ongoing riot as cover to pull off a heist. But though confusion reigns on the streets they are spotted at their work and forced to scatter, a running gun battle erupting with the pursuing police. Down one of their number the remaining quartet load their sizeable haul into a bag, jump into their cars and make a break for the border, the plan being to find a small town motel somewhere on the edges of the country where they can regroup and divide the plunder.
Everything goes to plan until they actually enter the motel. Working the desk are a pair of sisters, one ragingly oversexed and the other a raging alcoholic in the throes of withdrawal induced shakes despite the non-stop stream of booze she's pouring down her throat. Manning the kitchen is the elder brother, a hulking beast of a man more than happy to encourage the travelers into a tryst with his sisters, a tryst followed by a family dinner with Mother, a feeble woman force fed pureed sludge that oozes back out through her tracheotomy tube. Thoroughly repulsed by this point the two early arrivals - the remaining pair are still on the road - try to make an exit only to be stopped by the gun wielding second brother and then all hell breaks loose.
Name something, name absolutely anything, popularized in recent horror film and there's a fighting chance Frontiere(s) has got it. This is very much a kitchen sink sort of film with a little bit of everything thrown into the mix, a film that is completely unrelenting in the jolts and scares once it gets rolling. We've got abandoned mine shafts, severed tendons, mutant children, a possible zombie, saw blades, steam cooking, gun play o'plenty, and then, oh yes, we've got Father.
And who is Father, you ask? Father is Gens' one great contribution to horror iconography, his introduction the point where you realize that Gens isn't content to merely mimic what has come before but is rather demonstrating his mastery of it before chipping in his own unique moment. Father is the patriarch of this perverse family, the ringleader of the carnival of horrors. An old, wizened man, a former Nazi officer who simply refused to leave France following the war he is, despite his age, an unresistable force, fearsomely demented, ruling over his clan with an iron fist. Father is the work of a genius, the one element that immediately elevates Gens' debut film head and shoulders above the crowd of horror contenders.
Even putting Father aside you can make a good argument that Gens' film has more than enough at play to be given special consideration. Not only is it an impressive film technically - Gens clearly knows and loves his stuff and has the style to pull it all off incredibly well - but the framing story puts an interesting contextual spin on things, Gens offering up a sharp piece of social commentary equating the current political situation there with Nazi cruelty, cruelty he clearly sees as endemic to the species. The political angle is far from dominant - he doesn't spend a lot of time on it - but it is clearly there and deserves recognition.
There is an explosion of genre film happening in France right now, a number of young directors chafing for the chance to break out of the old ways and prove their stuff. Gens is clearly one of the leading names to watch in the movement.
