The Frontier

Chile, during the last years of the Pinochet regime. Ramiro Orellana is arrested during a labor union demonstration and is sentenced to exile. Without notice he is taken to
a cold and rainy area at El Sur, on the south coast. A majority of the inhabitants there are of Indian origin, Their isolation has made them a people that seem not to be part of the 20th century. Ramiro is forced to get used to his new life. He meets Maite and they embark on a passionate love affair.
Comment:
On a late night in October 1989 the photographer Agnaldo Maciel and I arrived in Parral, a small city in the south of Chile. Only a few weeks remained until Chile would say ''no'' to Pinochet's dictatorship in a referendum. Here in Parra! lived Manuel Bustos, a prominent labor union leader who like the teacher Ramiro Orellana in The Frontier, had been sentenced to ''relagacion'', inner exile.
''Chile can be likened to a sword, somewhat curved at its sharp end, with the mountain chain of the Andes as its back and the Pacific Ocean as its cutting edge'' writes the Swedish author Arthur Lundkvist in his classic book Volcanic Continent.
Most striking of all are the small towns
in the south of Chile, EI Sur. It is humid and rainy as on the Hebrides or the Faroe Islands. The people are as laconic as in Norrbotten. It smells like the Swedish woodland. Coming to these small communities
is a deja-vu experience; one feels at home and at the same time not. Here the rain and desolation has a melancholy of Its own. But fear prevails in EI Sur as well. The dictatorship intimidated the people to silence, and the fear stayed with them even after the inhabitants of the cities had dared to challenge their superior.
It is to this kind of community, light-years away from the radical middle class in the capital Santiago, that the exiled teacher in The Frontier arrives. Thus the punishment also becomes an encounter with reality.
This could have turned into a rather trite story about the fate of a political exile. But this is not the case. Indeed Ricardo Larrain's film has a political message, but it is most of all a declaration of love to the periphery, to people caught up in their lives and dreams.
The Frontier has the same magIc elements that we find in the best Latin American literature. The story is told tenderly and humorously. It is an absurd comedy. As in the books of Isabel Allende (from Chile) everything is real ~ and at the same time not.
When I see the ferry-boat that takes the teacher of mathematics to his place of exile I am sure: it was just the same boat that shipped our little rented car (and two oxen) to the town Theodora Smith, one day away from the city of Temuco where the culture of the Mapuche Indians is at its strongest.
David Isaksson

Orig. titel
La Frontera: Medverkande
Patricio Contreras, Gloria Laso: Producent
Eduardo Larraìn Pinedo: Manus
Jorge Goldemberg, Ricardo Larraín Pinedo: Foto
Hector Rios: Musik
Jaime de Aguirre: Talat språk
Spanish