I’ve only just revived this blog after an almost five-year absence, so it’s fair to say that I’m a little out of touch when it comes to more recent Czech cinema. So I did a search on IMDb, and what’s this wedged between two stone-cold classics in any language, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and The Cremator? Tomasz Wiński’s erotic drama Borders of Love.
It certainly looks pretty racy from the poster, which depicts the lead actress Hana Vagnerová (Bikers) naked in the throes of ecstasy as she apparently takes on three guys. But those hairy-palmed viewers out there should put down the box of Kleenex, because that poster art is about as raunchy as it gets.
Instead, we get a rather dry Czech blend of Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape and Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac, but one that is neither as perceptive as the former nor as in-your-face provocative as the latter.
We meet Hana (Vagnerová) and Petr (Matyáš Řezníček), a photogenic, progressive, and sexually active Prague couple who start delving into each other’s fantasies during pillow talk. They get onto the subject of sleeping with other partners, and Petr is far more enthusiastic about the idea at first. However, when they begin experimenting with swinging friends and casual hook-ups, Hana starts enjoying herself far more than Petr’s fragile ego can handle, with predictably fraught consequences for their relationship…
Wiński and his gang of co-screenwriters (including Vagnerová) are clearly aiming to dissect the state-of-play in modern sexual politics at a time when polyamory is becoming far more mainstream, but fall back on rather staid finger-wagging tropes. The film’s central question is an old one dressed in new lingerie: Can open relationships and radical honesty coexist with romantic security, or does such transparency simply expose emotional damage more clearly?
Shot in a rather clinical and dispassionate style, Borders of Love lacks the playful frankness of Sex, Lies, and Videotape in the confessional scenes. Soderburgh really had his finger on the pulse in his groundbreaking Palme d’Or-winning indie, using private sexual revelations as a narrative scalpel to lay open the hypocrisies of his characters with absolute precision.
Wiński’s film never gets close to such realistic honesty; indeed, while some nuances may be lost in translation to subtitles, there is something distinctly off about the conversations here. One thing about Czechs is that they tend to be very mature and open when it comes to talking about sex, which means they are also ready to send themselves up and laugh about it. There is very little of that humour here, and the dialogue seems unnaturally po-faced as a result.
Wiński’s emotionally vacant approach doesn’t help either; while the camera lingers and watches, he sometimes seems like he is unsure whether he is documenting intimacy or intruding upon it. The almost total absence of humour also gave me the feeling he was worried that allowing any levity might undermine his thoughtful approach. Which is a shame, because the two leads give committed performances. Hana Vagnerová and Matyáš Řezníček play the couple with a naturalism that makes their sexual missteps feel painfully plausible, particularly Petr’s pained expression as the scenario develops in ways that make him feel increasingly butt-hurt.
Which brings us to the sex. Arthouse cinema has always been a space where filmmaking provocateurs can push the limits, as we’ve seen in recent years with the likes of Lars Von Trier and Gaspar Noé. It’s not even a 21st-century thing – just take Nagisa Ōshima’s In the Realm of the Senses, for example. In contrast, the trysts in Borders of Love seem rather shy about actually depicting the act, which feels like a major cop-out. Not only are the sex scenes curiously unerotic, but they also don’t serve the main narrative thrust by being so coy. We get our characters talking about their hook-ups, and Hana drily explains at length how good it is. But if we don’t really see the orgasmic highs, we also don’t fully feel the source of Petr’s anguish.
Lacking the playfulness of Soderbergh’s film and the cruel insight of Von Trier’s, Borders of Love attempts to make a serious statement about how sex can expose our capacity for self-delusion. But by detaching itself from the emotional turbulence of Hana and Petr’s adventures, the unrestrained joy of those moments, and denying any humour or irony that might emerge from the chaos of casual flings, Wiński’s movie ultimately rings very false.
Czech Film Review 