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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 185 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 185, April 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
La Frontera
Dir: Ricardo Larrain
This is the first feature length film by Chilean director Ricardo Larrain. It is the story of Ramiro, a maths teacher exiled to a remote and desolate village on the country’s frontier for committing a minor act of resistance to the authorities in the last days of the military regime. The village is a bleak frontier between the modern world and the ancient world of the Mapuche Indians, where life is dominated by nature and the elements and survival is a balancing act poised between struggle against the forces of nature and cooperation with them.
Ramiro is confronted with feelings of loneliness, loss of identity and physical and emotional isolation from everything that made him what he is. Added to this he is subjected to harassment by a petty and self-important local official who insists that he signs an attendance book every eight hours to stop him escaping – not that there is anywhere he could escape to.
The tremendous sense of isolation is reflected in the pace and look of the film which takes spectacular advantage of the windswept surroundings.
Ramiro, is forced to consider his place in the world and his own internal frontiers. He eventually forms an intense and passionate relationship with another exile, Maite – a tragic and enigmatic figure who with her ancient father is a refugee from the Spanish Civil War.
The exiles’ relationship is a source of outrage to the local authorities who redouble their efforts to make the lives of the unhappy couple more miserable still, but their continuing intimacy is in itself an act of defiance.
The narrative is full of oblique references to the outside world that banished them to this place, but apart from the two secret policemen who escort him into exile and the local official there is little direct allusion to the political reality of Chile at that time, rather a sense of menace and foreboding is invoked.
Ironically, Ramiro seems to find some sense of home in exile, partly through his complex and deep relationship with Maite.
However, the village is threatened by natural disaster in the shape of a giant tidal wave which could destroy the village and all its inhabitants. Impending doom seems to sharpen Ramiro’s mind and he is forced to confront reality in a dramatic climax.
Maite’s and Ramiro’s differing responses to the crisis reflect the stark choice open to them, to turn inwards to nostalgia and death or to struggle, to live, albeit in confusion and far from satisfied.
Because this is a film which deals with individuals and their inner struggles, it has to deal with the outside world through the feelings and perceptions of those individuals, which it does with subtlety and humour.
When Ramiro tells Maite’s father that the authorities didn’t shoot him because ‘maths teachers aren’t dangerous’, the old man insists that he is dangerous and goes on to castigate the dictatorship, complaining that ‘even the fascists can’t do their jobs properly these days’.
The themes of trust and personal solidarity are also explored through Ramiro’s relationship with a local man who is a diver obsessed with finding the cause of the tidal wave by searching in the icy seas that threaten the village. His idealism and tenacity stand in stark contrast to Maite’s resignation and introspection.
The experience of exile so changes Ramiro that when he is offered his freedom he is unsure what to do, whether to stay with Maite who refuses to leave, or return to a ‘normality’ which has now become so strange and distant to him that it seems to offer another form of exile.
Humour and drama combine in this film which explores both personal and universal themes. It is a subtle and powerful exploration of the resilience of the human spirit. It’s well worth watching.
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