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La Frontera/The Exile

Valerie Adams | UK | 09/03/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"In the time of Pinochet, a teacher is exiled to an island off the coast of Chile. There he finds a conscientious but narrow-minded priest and an old Spanish republican still preoccupied with the Spanish civil war. The Spaniard has lost members of his family in a tsunami whose devastating effects are still to be seen on the island. The exile, lodged in the draughty church and subjected to the capricious orders of his brutish but comic guardians, is attracted to the Spaniard's daughter and becomes the working partner of a Chilean diver intent on discovering the causes of tsunamis. A metaphorical link between the forces of nature and those of political repression is implied in the film, which suggests interesting questions about rational and principled resistance to apparently irresistible forces.
I first saw this film on television: sadly, the quality of the DVD is a disappointment. The action often takes place outdoors in the rain at dusk or indoors in dimly-lit rooms. In the DVD the images have been made darker still and sometimes faces and figures have been rendered indistinct. But for the sake of a beautiful and intelligent film, it's still worth getting."