Border (2018 Swedish film)

Border () is a 2018 Swedish fantasy film directed by Ali Abbasi with a screenplay by Abbasi, Isabella Eklöf and John Ajvide Lindqvist based on the short story of the same name by Ajvide Lindqvist from his anthology "Let the Old Dreams Die". It won the "Un Certain Regard" award at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, and was selected as the Swedish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards but was not nominated. However, it was nominated for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
Plot.
Tina works for the Swedish Customs Service and uses her heightened olfactory sense to detect human emotions, including guilt and shame, together with the contraband that the humans are smuggling. She has a strongly Neanderthalic appearance and lives in a secluded house in the woods with Roland, a dog trainer. One day at the border, Tina sniffs out a memory card containing child pornography. Her boss wonders how she knew to look for it. Tina says she used her sense of smell. The boss asks her to help with the continuing investigation.
The next day, a strange man with facial features similar to Tina's appears at customs. Tina asks to inspect his bag. The bag is full of maggots and a device that the man claims is a maggot incubator. Tina lets him pass, but he soon returns and volunteers to be searched. He is taken into a back room where another officer performs a strip search. Tina is taken aback when she learns that the man has female genitalia and a large scar on his tailbone. Tina asks him who he is. He tells her his name is Vore and that he will be staying in a nearby hostel.
Tina goes to a nursing home to see her father, who does not look like her. She asks about her scar. He tells her she fell on something as a small child. She then visits the hostel where she finds Vore eating maggots off a tree. He gives her one, which she eats. Tina offers him a room in her guest house and he accepts. Tina brings him home. He tries to kiss her. Roland's suspicions are aroused.
Tina accompanies the police when they search the apartment where the suspected pedophiles live, and detects a camera with footage of an infant being sexually abused. The police arrest the occupants, but cannot identify who is trafficking the infants.
During a thunderstorm, Vore enters Tina's house, and the two of them huddle under a table, terrified by the lightning. They finally kiss. During a walk after the storm, Tina confesses that she has a chromosome deformity which makes it difficult to have sex and impossible to bear children. Vore tells her that it's not a deformity, and she should ignore what humans say about her. Tina is astonished as an erect penis emerges from her groin. She mounts Vore. They make love. Afterward, Vore tells Tina that she is a troll, just like he is, and that he is in contact with a group of trolls who maintain a furtive existence in Finland.
Tina is excited by her newfound identity and begins living more like a troll. She finally has the confidence to tell Roland to move out. She notices that Vore has taped his refrigerator shut. The refrigerator contains a cardboard box into which a strange infant has been placed. Vore tells Tina that the baby is a hiisi, an unfertilized troll embryo that will soon die. Vore plans to use the hiisi as a changeling and is waiting to secretly replace a real human infant with the dying troll embryo.
While one of the arrested pedophiles is being transferred, Vore stops the van and kills him. He tells Tina it was to prevent him from telling the police that it was he, Vore, who was trafficking human infants. He also confesses that the infant trafficking is part of a plot by trolls to get their revenge on humans for all the trolls that humans tortured in the 1970s. This disturbs Tina who believes that past human mistreatment of trolls does not justify such vengeful acts.
The next day, Tina's neighbours call for an ambulance because their baby is ailing. Unbeknownst to them, it is not their child, but a changeling. Realising that Vore has followed through on his planned deception, Tina goes to the guest house. Vore and his belongings are gone, but he has left a note instructing Tina to meet him on the ferry. She finds him on the deck. She explains that her compassion towards humans doesn't mean she is one herself, that trolls are capable of compassion too. She signals to the police, who close in and handcuff Vore, but he manages to escape by jumping overboard. His body is not found.
Tina's father finally tells her the truth about who she is: that he used to work as a caretaker at a psychiatric hospital where trolls were tortured and experimented on; that it was from there that he adopted Tina, whose original troll name was Reva, to raise as a human; and that her real troll parents are dead and that he knows where they are buried. Later Tina drives to the old hospital and finds her parents' graves.
A few months later, Tina finds a parcel on her porch. Inside is a troll infant and a postcard from Finland.
Production.
John Ajvide Lindqvist wrote the first draft of the screenplay, and then Abassi hired Isabella Eklöf to add more "psychological realism" to the story. Casting for the film took 18 months. To transform into the character of Tina, Eva Melander gained a considerable amount of weight and wore prosthetics that took four hours each day to apply.
The port scenes were filmed at Kapellskär.
Release.
"Border" screened at Cannes, where it won the 2018 "Un Certain Regard" award, Telluride, and the Toronto International Film Festival. The director Ali Abbasi holds an Iranian passport, which could have prevented him from traveling to the United States due to the travel ban, but he was granted a rare exception to attend the Telluride Festival.
Reception.
Box office.
"Border" grossed $771,930 in the United States and Canada, and $1.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $2.2 million, plus $110,829 with home video sales.
Critical response.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97%, based on 127 reviews, and an average rating of 7.91/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Thrilling, unpredictable, and brilliantly acted, "Border (Gräns)" offers a singular treat to genre fans looking for something different." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 75 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Alissa Simon of "Variety" described the film as "an exciting, intelligent mix of romance, Nordic noir, social realism, and supernatural horror that defies and subverts genre conventions," and Stephen Dalton of "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote, "A couple of sharp curveball additions to Lindqvist’s original plot also elevate "Border" beyond genre trappings and into stranger, sadder, more generally relatable territory."