Northless (2009)

Everything is huge in New York. Some things aren't. Late Sunday night: a movie theater for alternative cinema, four people in the audience. A shame, because Northless is not a bad film. As a matter of fact, it covers an interesting and important themes: illegal immigration from Mexico to USA. Rigoberto Perezcano has a kindred soul in Aki Kaurismäki. They both employ a very conscious aesthetic along with a dry sense of humor. Northless is also obviously a political film. A young man is bent on crossing the border. Time after time, the American authorities catch him, and send him back. The young man is stranded in Tijuana, where he works in a grocery store, where he befriends the middle-aged owner. I was a bit unhappy about how the film attempted to connect several story lines, but never quite making it. It's a story about a person who doesn't really know what he wants in love - and people around him who has been cheated and disappointed. But the social realism of crossing borders, fatal events taking place in these border crossing attempts - remains a strength in the film. And the film doesn't always stick with sordid realism: rather, Perezcano has an eye for the absurdity of borders, territory. Most of all, he has an understanding for the clash of disillusion and stubborn hope. The young man is presented without compromise, as somebody who has a strong feel for what he must do, but who is still deeply confused about his relation to other people and what it is that makes him try, over and over again, to cross the American border. Aesthetically, it works with few means, without trying too hard or becoming overly conscious about "making a slow movie". It's a film that uses silence in a very nice way, evoking awkward moments and heavy, intentional gazes.