FILM OF THE WEEK: Frontier of Dawn

Frontier of Dawn (La Frontière de l'aube)
Directed by Philippe Garrel
2008, 106 minutes, France

Three stateside theatrical releases of Philippe Garrel films in as many years—could there be a big snowball fight going down in hell? The still criminally underrepresented post-New Wave auteur's follow-up to 2005's Regular Lovers again features his handsome, hawk-schnozzed son Louis Garrel, the grainy black-and-white cinematography of William Lubtchansky (though here more warmly, lusciously exposed), and a brooding romantic discord between past and present. Garrel the younger stars as François, a suave photographer on assignment to shoot rising starlet Carole (Laura Smet), and from her smirky smiles gazed upon by Garrel's camera (or rather, the Garrels'), it's but two blinks before their affair blossoms and intensifies as if their lives depended on each other's love. In a tragically real sense, that's true.

Their disarmingly beautiful faces and bodies intimately fill the frame in largely drawn-out takes, with relatively minimal movement as if they were closer to the character's still photography than the motion picture kind. The score seems misplaced from classic suspense or horror, all violins and pianos striking sharp, stark, blatantly foreshadowing notes. Perhaps those who heckled the film at Cannes last year dismissed this all as pretentious navel gazing, but it's a bold approach to attempt conveying the ache of absolute love. In the early stages, the passion Carole and François share is palpable (if at first, mutually uneven) in just their conversations: they question and dissect and inexplicably talk circles around trust, respect, and the impermanence of their fling: "We mustn't say we love each other," Carole demands. It's revealed that she's married to an actor who is gigging away in Hollywood, and even if François were just a placeholder until her husband's return, she's not just prone to erratic behavior—she's coming undone. Flirting with other men, drinking to excess, but still so obsessively intoxicated on her lover's desire that she begins to lose him, Carole's side of the tale ends a little after the film's halfway mark. Her institutionalization, electroshock therapy and self-destructive choices have forced François down a new path.

A year later, he meets the no-less-stunning Eve (Clémentine Poidatz), a fragile little thing who is—for a change of pace—sane, and thus far duller than Carole. François seems resigned to settling, or as his friend better nails it, "tormented by conventional happiness." Eve learns she's pregnant, François meets her dad and stepmom, the possibilities of marriage are discussed, and yet there she is, Carole, haunting him within his mirror reflection. Is she literally a phantasm from beyond, come back to egg him into suicide so that they may be together, or more realistically, is this his subconscious projecting the guilt he has for abandoning her? In either case, her pull is still strong enough to drive him to the brink, and such an expressionist conceit feels appropriately sinister, frightening, and unashamedly absurd as the effects of romantic loneliness can be. If love is a fatalistic monster that can devour our souls, why do we rarely try defending ourselves from it?

Frontier of Dawn opens today in New York at BAMcinématek in their "Focus on IFC Films" series. For showtimes and more info, visit the official BAM site.

Posted by ahillis at March 6, 2009 8:00 PM