The good immigrant

Border (d. Ali Abbasi)

It’s a mixed bag. It features a potentially outrageous sex scene for vanilla folks that del Toro couldn’t show in his Shape of Water. But, it’s really quite tame for my tastes, way too hetero, despite the switcheroo, way too white, despite the heavy make up. (Currently reading the new Marlon James book and I’m not sure if I like it or understand it but when it comes to sexuality, it’s far more imaginative and varied than what is offered here.) It’s exciting to watch if one has been paying attention to the rapid acceptance of the diversification of gender, gender roles, and sexualities in many parts of the world. Ditto, ideas regarding ecology and (self-)sustainability. But if these outsiders are also stand-ins for immigrants or the landless, then the allegorical operation falters, badly. That’s because the film makes a simplistic dualism between those who identify with human and those who do not where the latter engages in vengeful (in)justice. Yeah, humans are vile, according to the movie, but so is the non-human, and this is where I have an issue with the movie because the immigrant figure is justified in acting out negatively which means immigrants are “negative” figures. One doesn’t have to formulate a group of people like that. There’s a line thrown in to ease the more human identifying viewers, but it doesn’t ring quite true because, well I don’t know about you but, I was rooting for the inhumankind. It’s a very curious Sweden too despite the immigrant sounding name of the director: there are no immigrant faces in the film as if the border inspection was so precise that they could only let in the good kind of immigrants, those who make nice little genre busting films but not too radical because to go that far would mean loss of funding.

#2019 #31