The new movie Judith Colelldirector always awaited since she made “Elisa K”, has two intersecting coordinates, place and time, and a plot vector or segment that explains them. The story he tells takes place in a border town in the Pyrenees. … with France and a few years after the end of the Civil warand the plot is separated, at least in part, from the usual plot of our post-war subgenre. The conflict it shows is the arrival at this border of Jews fleeing France occupied by the Nazis.
The scenario of Miguel Ibáñez Monroy and Gérard Giménez It reproduces in these coordinates the ambiguity that Francoism historically maintained with the Jews, both anti-Semitic and philosephardic, and that there was no ban on entry to the thousands of refugees who arrived, but there was a policy of control and obstacles, of deliveries and ruinous transit to Portugal. And in a way, “Frontera” represents this ambiguous and tragic situation through a few characters, an honest official who tries to help those who seek refuge, a mayor helpful to those in charge, a civil guard in charge who seeks his profit with the black market, a naturally bloodthirsty Nazi officer…
Judith Colell does not exempt them from their status as “clichés” and they reproduce, in fiction, this black point in history, this crossroads or confluence that had, with another spirit, another epic and another glamour, “Casablanca”, whose “cliché” characters have this little hand of eternity. This does not happen to Colell’s film, but he tries to convey in a rural and simple way this set of feelings, nobility, baseness and greed that assail human beings in extreme situations.
Although “Frontera” acquires another meaning, more current than that of Rick’s Café, that of reflecting certain current immigration situations, although in a very schematic way and without too much refining the message that could emerge from a hasty comparison. The acting body of course does not seek the eternity of its characters, but rather to make them understandable, human and inhuman. The weight is carried by Miki Esparbé in his most serious version; Asier Etxandia, who takes up the tone and timbre he showed in “La cena”; Jordi Sánchez, this time without grace, and the actresses Bruna Cusí and María Rodriguez Soto, who are perfect in well-crafted characters of strong women.
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