Swedish Customs officer Tina lives an empty life. Her job seems to be nothing more than a glorified drug dog (sniffing passengers as they get off a ferry), her elderly father lives in a nursing home and disapproves of her living with the listless Roland who appears taking advantage of Tina for a free place to crash. Even worse than all of that is Tina suffers from a chromosomal abnormality that makes her look like a caveman. Or does she? Her life is turned upside-down one day when a passenger gets off the ferry and he looks a lot like her. Tina’s life pretty much goes to shit after that.
I really enjoyed the basic idea of BORDER (by the way, that is a horrible name for this movie) and was super into for about 20 minutes, then the story slowly started drifting off into various paths that I found uninteresting and, while I still watched it, I began to lose interest. Also, the character of Vore was such a grotesque and vile shitbag that I could barely even stand looking at that worthless shit stain. Tina seemed to be a genuine and likeable character and then when she finally meets somebody of her own kind, the person is an absolute horror. I didn’t care for that. But, I guess, that is just life for you.
Up and down pace, beautiful camerawork, a few enhanced shots that were distracting, above average acting, some nudity that I didn’t want to see, interesting story that could have been much better, beautiful Swedish countryside, impressive lighting. Overall, BORDER is an interesting film that would have been better off if it hadn’t pulled its punches. Or just told a completely different story with the same character of Tina. Still, it’s worth watching, just don’t expect too much.
