Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Fall festival season is coming to an end in Toronto but there’s still some left to see. This weekend, watch out for Blood in the Snow. Not literally. BITS is the all-Canadian film fest that shows horror, genre and underground films at the Royal Cinema. And at the ROM this weekend, presented by Ekran and The Polish Filmmakers Association, you can see films with historic themes celebrating 100 years of Poland’s Regained Independence, featuring Andrej Wajda, Roman Polanski and other great Polish directors.

This week, I’m looking at two movies set far from cities. There’s a Canadian actor who thinks a farmer’s stories don’t smell quite write; and a fairytale-like Swedish customs officer who can sniff out crime.

Border

Dir: Ali Abbasi

(Based on a short story by John Lindqvist, author of Let the Rght One In)

Tina (Eva Melander) is a customs officer at a remote ferry dock in rural Sweden. She lives in a cabin in the woods. She feels a kinship with the local foxes and reindeer, more so than with people. She shares her home with a redneck dog trainer named Roland, but rejects his

sexual advances. It just doesn’t feel right. She’s resigned to a life of celibacy, partly because of her very unusual appearance. She’s kind and friendly, but… pretty ugly. She looks almost neanderthal, with her heavy brow, scarred skin, scraggly hair, and a nose like a lion’s. And with that nose comes an amazing sense of smell. She can detect the hidden emotions – shame, cruelty, and evil intent – of smugglers and criminals passing through her customs line. When she sniffs out kiddy porn on a businessman’s cel phone, the local police begin to take notice. They ask her to help them uncover a kidnapping ring.

Meanwhile, one day at the customs house, she sniffs out a strange man. Vore (Finnish actor Eero Milanoff) looks like her and sniffs like she does. She’s suspicious at first but notices a definite attraction. When they finally get together, their sex is explosive! He urges her to run away with him and stop living “like the humans”. Wait… what?!

If they’re not human what are they, exactly? And what other secrets is Vore hiding?

Border is a fantastic Swedish movie, a combination horror and supernatural thriller that manages to be funny, repulsive, touching and shocking (not for the faint of heart). It also deals with a wide range of unexpected topics, from intersexuality and gender transformation, to ostracism, folklore, mental illness, and a whole lot more. The acting is fantastic, the look and feel of this movie is amazing.

If you want to see something truly different, this is a film for you.

The Drawer Boy

Dir: Arturo Pérez Torres, Aviva Armour-Ostroff

Based on the play by Michael Healey

It’s the early 1970s in rural southern Ontario. Miles (Jakob Ehman) is an earnest young actor, part of a Toronto theatre collective that wants to create a play about farmers and farm life. He arrives with a bunch of other actor/hippies, each staying on different farms, who get together, every so often, to rehearse and compare notes. Miles’s new home is run by two men who have lived there since 1945 after serving together in the army.  Angus (Stuart Hughes) bakes bread in the kitchen and keeps the books. He seems a bit touched in the head. In fact he has no short term memory – there’s a metal plate in his brain from a wartime explosion. Morgan (Richard Clarkin) is more like the boss, handling the heavier farm work. Morgan lets Miles stay there as long as he adapts to farm life. That means 3:00 a.m. wake-ups, hard work, and “don’t ask too many questions”. Angus doesn’t like thinking about troubling memories… it gives a headache.

Morgan talks slow and low, like a farmer, but he’s smarter than he looks. He feeds gullible Miles lots of halftruths and impossibilities, which Miles dutifully scribbles down in his ever-present notebook. Things like “dairy cows eat pigs”, and are terrified of humans, knowing they could be slaughtered any day.

Morgan also tells a story to Angus each day, to restore his lost memories. It’s about a boy who draws, two tall sisters, and a house on the farm they were all supposed to share. But when the actors perform their workshop in a barn for all the local farmers, including Angus, something clicks. Seeing his own story performed on the stage, suddenly, like a knock on the head, unleashes a flood of memories. Memories that Morgan doesn’t want Angus to know…

The Drawer Boy is a film adaptation of the famous Canadian play from the 1990s, which itself was about the making of an earlier play in the 1970s. I’m always cautious about plays turned into movies – sometimes the media just don’t match. But don’t worry, this play makes a wonderful movie. It incorporates the drama of the original while adding special effects and scene changes hard to show on stage. The three actors are all excellent, and seeing it in a real barn with real cows, tractors and bales of hay just adds to the realism. The Drawer Boy is a great movie about storytelling, memory, loss, and relationships… a perfect dose of Canadiana on the big screen.

The Drawer Boy and Borders both open today in Toronto; check your local listings.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.