Movie Review for Frontier(s) (2008)

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Review #644 of 365
Movie Review of Frontier(s) (2008) [NC-17] 108 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $4.25
Where Viewed: Harkins Ciné Capri at Northfield 18, Denver, CO
When Seen: 10 May 2008
Time: 8:00 pm
DVD Release Date: Unscheduled (please check back)
After the Credits:
Film's Official Website • Film's Trailer

Soundtrack: order the CD below

Directed by: Xavier Gens (Au petit matin)
Screenplay by: Xavier Gens (Au petit matin)

Featured Cast (Where You Might Remember Him/Her From):
Karina Testa (Il était une fois dans l'oued) • Aurélien Wiik (Des illusions) • Patrick Ligardes (Enfermés dehors) • David Saracino (The Da Vinci Code) • Maud Forget (Fracassés) • Samuel Le Bihan (Passager de l'été, Le) • Chems Dahmani (Dans les cordes) • Amélie Daure (Infrarouge) • Estelle Lefébure (Au petit matin) • Rosine Favey (Horizon croustille, L') • Adel Bencherif (Paris, je t'aime) • Joël Lefrançois (Écoute le temps) • Jean-Pierre Jorris (Tanguy)

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Click to read the spoiler points for Frontier(s)

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If there were any doubt in any USAers' minds that only USAers can produce shockingly grisly, pointlessly horrifying films like The Hills Have Eyes and The Hills Have Eyes II (the remakes), Hostel and Hostel: Part II, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, let them fall to rest as Frenchman Xavier Gens has certainly proven that, indeed, other nations can stoop as low. Xavier Gens directed and wrote Frontière(s) in the same vein as these others but managed to take it a step further by employing a cartel of left-over Nazis instead of radiated inbred country folk like Wes Craven or high class Euro monsters like Eli Roth. You be the judge as to which works best for you. Oh, and it just wouldn't be a French film if it were not for the requisite mentions to civil unrest and rioting against the government would it; so, of course, Mr. Gens starts his film out with a bank robbery during the rioting by a gang of hoodlums who would simply shoot you dead to prove their manhood. Four men and a young pregnant woman among them they flee the police with tragic consequences for one. They split up with Farid (Chems Dahmani) and Tom (David Saracino) taking the loot and heading for the border and former love birds Yasmine (Karina Testa) who is carrying Alex's (Aurélien Wiik) baby rushing Sami (Adel Bencherif) to the hospital. Despite the brilliance of French health care, Sami bites the dust as French Police try to catch Yasmine for interrogation. She escapes with Alex and they head off to meet up with Tom and Farid to get their shares of the loot. Tom, a rather suave and fierce dude drives while Farid navigates them straight to a little inn off the beat and path. They enter and find a willing and gracious pair of hostesses and before they know it they've gotten free rooms, had great sex with their willing hostesses, Tom more than Farid who tries to stay true to his supposed girlfriend back home in the ghettos of Paris, and been invited to a 'lovely' family dinner with the owners of the inn namely a bunch of very odd characters all of whom look like they just escaped from where The Hills Have Eyes. This doesn't immediately set off any warning bells for them. It takes a the force feeding of a strange meat substance to the paraplegic grandmother at the table that pushes them to want to leave. As they try to escape various incidents happen with Tom ending up getting his hand half shot off. They manage to get to the car and flee, but with Goetz (Samuel Le Bihan) in hot pursuit. He eventually runs them off the road where they plummet what looks like around 50 ft. down an abandoned mine shaft. Don't worry, they survive, or that wouldn't be any fun because they wouldn't get to find out what's down the shaft.

As all of this is going on, of course, mind you, Yamine and Alex are racing to the inn to meet up with their gang and split the money. When they arrive at the inn, there's no sign of Tom and Farid, of course, because they are told they have headed down the road to a hostel instead. They are escorted to the hostel and introduced to the family the hard way. Things go quickly from very bad to incredibly worse in no time when Alex discovers the body of Tom hanging by his feet by meat hooks.

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…a whole lot of nasty stuff going on…definitely warrants an [NC-17] rating…

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Shortly thereafter, the head of the clan gets the idea he can purify the blood of his people with that of Yasmine's and whoa, there's a whole lot of nasty stuff going on behind the scenes here that definitely warrant an [NC-17] rating. And thank goodness that finally, the MPAA is getting a clue about these kinds of films and giving them the rating they richly deserve. It's just too bad they decided to single out the foreign film because there's equally horrific and grisly stuff worthy of an [NC-17] rating in the aforementioned list of USA-borne films.

If Mr. Gens was striving to equal or best his USAer counterparts, he has succeeded on many levels. Frontier(s) is better in the sense of building morbid curiosity as to what's going to happen to these characters, but worse in the sense of predictability. There's probably not a fan of the genre alive who couldn't correctly predict the outcome of this film after about 20 minutes in. Also, while his film is edgier and comes across as, perhaps, somewhat more skillful by capitalizing on the political climate of the country as well, there's no more logic to the course of events that flow than the peer films. By deciding to cast his 'heroes' in the film as bank robbers and violent thugs (albeit some are quite charming in their own way), he also devalues the level of empathy possible for them as they are quite literally, one-by-one, tortured and killed.

The acting in the film is equally hodgepodge in quality and intention. Clearly, Karina Testa's Yasmine does most of the film's good work. David Saracino's Tom, too, has some relevant moxy coming across a bit as the French version of Ashton Kutcher, perhaps. Aurélien Wiik, with a shaved head, poses a menacing figure with his own degree of suaveness. The rest of the characters, good or bad, are unrealized. Their motivations are masked partly for cause and partly for mediocre writing and planning.

The special effects were as gruesome and gory as anything produced stateside with a couple of demonstrably horrific scenes that would turn even the most ardent fan's stomach: one involves pincers to the Achilles tendons and one involves a circular saw (no one will blame you if you turn away at the sight of either of these clues). The film, also, might have been just a bit more ominous had it been filmed in black and white believe it or not. The ending is reminiscent, for some reason, of Stephen King's Carrie. Fans of the genre might like to see this just to see how the genre is playing out in the hands of international directors. Others might just want to purchase the DVD. No matter what anyone says, it's always going to sound far-fetched to a USAer's ear when criminals and scary guys speak French.

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Other Projects Featuring Frontier(s) (2008)
Cast Members
Karina Testa • Aurélien Wiik • Patrick Ligardes
David Saracino • Maud Forget • Samuel Le Bihan
Chems Dahmani • Amélie Daure • Estelle Lefébure
Rosine Favey • Joël Lefrançois
Director
Xavier Gens
Writer
Xavier Gens

DVD

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Review-lite Frontier(s) (2008) [max of 150 words]

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Ever wonder if the morbid fascination for grisly horror films lives and breathes only in the USA. Well, allow French writer / director Xavier Gens to put all of your curiosity behind with his latest film, Frontier(s) featuring the acting talents of Karina Testa as Yasmine, girlfriend of bank robber, Alex (Aurélien Wiik), who discover themselves in the midst of a Nazi holdout group led by a homicidal, cannibalistic maniac who intends to use her blood to purify his race of halfwits. With torture and mayhem galore, expect the very worst of human behavior in this film that handily dispatches the notion that civility reigns supreme in the European Union.

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