By GABRIEL THOMAS
There are few cinematic movements as widely known for traumatizing general audiences as New French Extremity. This was a niche that found its way into the back aisles of video stores with newfound experiments, including Gasper Noe’s Irreversible and Alexandre Aja’s High Tension in the late 1990s and early 2000s. These movies took taboo topics, ranging from rape to child abuse to violence against women, and cast a spotlight on them in attempts to address what nobody else wanted to. The darkest of these twisted films would become the subject of rumors around the schoolyard and eventually generate widespread interest.
Whether or not that sounds like a despicable premise to you, it didn’t stop the movement from being a major success with horror fans who longed for more on-screen violence. These films were designed to push not just the limits of bad taste but to see how much audiences were willing to stomach in the name of entertainment.
New French Extremity was produced primarily in that nihilistic post-9/11 era when everyone was simultaneously trying to stick together in the name of national and humanist unity but also mostly fueled by racist and homophobic rage. The films from this time are littered with cringe-inducing morals and political references, with dark, drab color palettes mixed with a healthy blend of slurs and unlikable characters. I am all for pushing the boundaries of content, but there is an angst in the early 2000s that, while fascinating, is also suppressive and uncomfortable.
“Suppressive” and “uncomfortable” are two adjectives that could describe Xavier Gens‘ 2007 horror flick Frontier(s). (Why is that “s” in parentheses? I have my theories, but nothing peer-reviewed.) I first saw Frontier(s) some years ago, and remember meeting it mostly with disinterest and a little bit of apprehension for some of the pedophilic elements, but I appreciated its premise and realism.
Gens’ film follows a group of thieves who escape a violent France after a conservative candidate is elected president. To escape a riotous and dissolving social sphere in Paris, they arrive at a hotel run by a family of neo-Nazis and are forced to fight their way out in a desperate attempt to survive.
Opening with grainy news footage of a crumbling country, Frontier(s) creates its world instantaneously, showing criminal activity, graphic violence and aggressive characters who all seem to hate each other. It also introduces a shocking key element: The main character is pregnant. To the seasoned viewer of these fucked-up French flicks, and even to those who understand the logistics of basic dramatic structure, it is assured that this baby is in cataclysmic trouble.
After her brother is killed in a very dramatic and heartfelt scene, our lead character Yasmine (Karina Testa) is forced to escape the city with her now ex-boyfriend, while their other young friends are already en route to what we discover is a secluded Nazi hotel.
If you want to know the plot of the film, you could either watch it for yourself or read the synopsis online. You’re here because you want to know if the movie is any damn good, and you’re in luck. However, the answer is kind of complicated.
My relationship with this era of grungy shock flicks is something I have wrestled with. On one hand, I appreciate the courage of these filmmakers for pushing the envelope in unprecedented ways. With a cultural identity that shifted so fast in such a short time following one of the most shocking tragedies imaginable, American and foreign films alike became much more nihilistic. Horror is defined by its movements, and the early 2000s saw a few happen at once, the defining factor being their emphasis on confronting realism and no-holds-barred premises.
The rise of American horror remakes in the early 2000s has been documented to death. What interests me more is torture porn films, which have been dissected for their all-too-obvious parallels to the War on Terror, an era when human suffering became the focus of youth in a world that suddenly ceased to feel safe. Bypassing this idea, there is something to be said about swaths of teenagers flocking to theaters with the sole purpose of subjecting each other to simulated pain and torment. These films and their fans ranged from curious to masochistic, but these European filmmakers took what had become commonplace depictions of graphic violence and twisted them until they were shocking again.
While movies like Bustillo and Maury’s Inside followed the thread of an infant in danger, and Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day walked the line between vicious sex and cannibalism, Frontier(s) takes a turn to Nazism.
If the goal of Frontier(s) is to make its viewer uncomfortable, then the film succeeds. If it is trying to preach a soulful lesson about France’s political environment in which characters we grow to appreciate are torn limb from limb, then it is not as successful. The movie is often quite intense, but it has the problem that a majority of these films suffer from – characters that you are supposed to root for and sympathize with by the end of the film, even if they don’t always make the right choices.
Gens chooses to depict criminals who are loud and obnoxious but then decides not to revel in the torture of these irredeemable characters nor provide them with any connective humanity that tethers us to them despite their flaws. I am not protesting the use of racial and homophobic slurs in a film about Nazis, but they are often thrown around by both heroes and villains, blurring lines in a way that comes across as dated and unintentional. It’s like an old Eli Roth script … or a new Eli Roth script.
However, the performances of the villainous characters are truly vengeful and make the film worth watching. The lead Nazi, portrayed by Jean-Pierre Jorris, carries himself with the bravado and occasional overacting that we have come to expect from villains of such scrupulous backgrounds. He emerges from the darkness in the third act and constantly makes me squirm in my seat.
While not nearly as memorable, the rest of the family is nevertheless the stuff of nightmares. They are not just rageful. They’re full of sexual frustration and devious tendencies that support the unpredictability of these terrorists.
The most iconic and controversial element of the film is Eva, portrayed by Maud Forget in a role that is unforgettable in its irony. Eva is supposedly a teenage Jewish girl who has been used by the family to birth Nazi babies ever since they abducted her from her parents as a small child.
This is where my aforementioned “complex relationship” with this subgenre rears its ugly head. I would never recommend that a filmmaker exercise restraint in terms of their art. Subversive media has been the truest form since the Renaissance, and boundary-pushing movies are a clear modern example of the age-old tradition. Yet, there is a difference between experimentation and indulgent mean-spiritedness. Being that I am from another culture, it can be difficult to distinguish what merely offends my sensitive American sensibilities and what is just plain wrong, but that’s part of the test.
Luckily, Eva’s character is handled much more respectfully than I had remembered. After her initial appearance where she explains her horrific origin and experiences with the men of the family, there is not much of an emphasis on the pedophilic aspects of her story. She is treated more like a grieving mother who has become a victim of Stockholm Syndrome and less like a hopeless young girl who has suffered unspeakable abuse for the last decade. The fact that performer Maud Forget was at 25 years of age when she portrayed the character helps, too.
A lot of these movies are remembered more for select scenes of violence and gore than for the experience of watching the film as a whole, and Frontier(s) follows this tradition.
Perhaps its darkest moment arrives when ex-boyfriend Alex (Aurélien Wiik) is locked in a pigpen with Yasmine. After she makes her escape, the terrifying older Nazi I mentioned earlier punishes Alex for allowing the mother of his child to flee.
The plan was to abduct Yasmine and turn her into another source for birthing Nazis, but when they find out she is already pregnant, they are determined to take her baby. Upon her disappearance, Alex has both of his Achilles tendons cut with a large pair of clippers. It is grotesque, and there is no detail spared.
Now comes the moment that defines most horror films: the dreaded ending. With Martyrs being the exception and High Tension being the rule, I have found that almost every film in the New-French Extremity movement goes way too big for its own good in the final ten minutes of its story. This is also true of Frontier(s). It ends in shootouts and explosions. I didn’t see the route to the firework factory when I read the map, but I guess I took a detour somewhere.
I’m not trying to be pretentious or say that serious films can’t lead to epic conclusions in which the filmmakers lighten up and have a little bit of creative fun to satisfy their audience. Still, when the thesis of these movies is “the world is terrible and will devour you without warning,” the tone feels bitterly confused when that pretense is dropped in the name of a ludicrous ending. I love head explosions. They are awesome, but that isn’t always enough.
Anyway, somebody gets cut in half with a table saw, and it’s pretty brutal. It has all the blood and chaos you might want from a lighter film, and maybe people like that, but I would have liked to have seen Yasmine take her revenge against these malicious assholes in a more grounded way. It’s still a terrifying, bloody mess. I just wish it wasn’t so damn silly. It doesn’t mesh for me, but it doesn’t ruin the entire movie.
Frontier(s) is not an irresponsible movie. It isn’t so self-indulgent in how morally reprehensible it is at times. It’s trying to say something uncomfortable and the filmmakers occasionally miss the mark. It’s tense, disturbing and has some moments of genuinely memorable terror and gore. It also lacks a real human spirit, and it becomes too bombastic for its own good.
