Films with very little dialogue can be incredibly powerful because, when words disappear, a filmmaker must trust the images, the actors, sound and silence to tell us what the characters cannot or will not say, and when that works, a room can reveal more than pages of conversation. Ah Biao’s Border, which had its premiere at the San Sebastian International Film Festival and is also his first feature as a director, clearly wants to work in this way, and there are moments when its silence is beautifully handled. The images are enough to understand what is happening, but there are also long stretches where the lack of dialogue creates confusion and distance rather than bringing us closer to the people on screen.
Set in a forgotten northern town, Border centres on Luo Jia (Zheyan Li), a young miner living a bleak existence defined by poverty, abuse and a life that seems to offer very little possibility of change. He lives with his father and works alongside other miners, moving through his days almost mechanically until Su Qing (Feng Qi), a young woman he knows very little about, enters his life and gives him something new to focus on, although what at first is an escape from his numb routine eventually takes him into much darker territory.
Ah Biao, who also wrote and shot the film, gives Border a strong visual identity, and the surroundings tell us a great deal about Luo Jia before we know very much about him as a person, with the mining town feeling isolated from everything beyond it and the men who live there seeming equally cut off from one another, saying little and keeping most of what they feel to themselves. There are scenes where this approach works well, because these are people who do not say much in the first place, and the quietness suits both them and the isolated world they live in. At its best, Border proves that dialogue is not always necessary when the images can tell the story on their own.
The problem is that silence still has to communicate something, and this is where Border did not always work for me. There are scenes where the images are enough and nothing needs to be explained through dialogue, but elsewhere I found myself trying to understand what the film wanted me to take from what I was watching. This becomes more visible with Luo Jia and Su Qing, because we are expected to become emotionally invested in their relationship, yet the film gives us very little to help us understand the connection developing between them. We understand Luo Jia’s loneliness and his need for affection, and meeting Su Qing clearly brings something new into his otherwise empty life, but I never quite felt the connection between them strongly enough to understand why she changes him so much. Since the film places so much importance on love as something that can both save and destroy a person, I wanted their relationship to feel more convincing.
Ah Biao has said that Border was inspired by two real criminal cases in which he saw connections to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Having studied Russian literature myself, I was curious about that connection, but struggled to find much of Dostoevsky in the film beyond the themes of crime, suffering and morality. Perhaps this also comes from how differently we read literature depending on our background, and my own understanding is influenced by an Eastern European education. For me, Crime and Punishment goes much deeper into guilt, death, punishment and redemption, taking us inside a person’s mind and moral struggle. Those ideas may have inspired Border, but I am not sure they come across strongly enough on screen.
That does not make Border unsuccessful as a whole, because Ah Biao knows how to create atmosphere and, as his own cinematographer, he has a good eye for isolation, faces and landscapes, while Zheyan Li gives a great performance that suits a man who has spent much of his life hiding what he feels. Through Luo Jia and Su Qing, Border explores whether love can offer someone a way out of despair or lead them towards destruction, especially when that person has experienced very little affection before.
At 78 minutes, Border is not a long film, but I still never felt that I knew Luo Jia well enough or fully understood the connection between him and Su Qing. Leaving things open to interpretation can work beautifully, but here I was sometimes simply unsure what the film wanted to say.
Border is not a bad debut and Ah Biao creates some beautiful images, but strong cinematography cannot do everything, and the story of loneliness, abuse, violence and the need to be loved never quite comes together. There is plenty of potential here, but for me the film needed a stronger connection between its characters and the audience.
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Written by Maggie Gogler
Featured image courtesy of Reelsuspects & SSIFF
View of the Arts is an online publication dedicated to film, music, and the arts, with a strong focus on the Asian entertainment industry. As we continue to grow, we aim to deepen our coverage of Asian music while remaining committed to exploring and celebrating creativity across the global arts landscape.
