La Frontera

Superbly written and acted. I'm still thinking about this movie, 15 years later, after seeing it at a local art film movie house in Ann Arbor. The pastoral beauty of the Maine-like seaside isolation is beautifully and bleakly shot, and the location is a perfect choice for this reflective look at how we banish and bury the truth and emotional life. It's the ocean, the natural world, which keeps track of the past and the present, and does not let anyone forget. I give this film 10 votes out of 10 for vibrant use of Latin-American Magical Realism plus Best "guys dancing with guys" in a bar in Nowheresville scene ever. A quiet, thoughtful movie that precisely conveyed a different way of thinking about the world, and which changed a lot of the ways that I think about the world--exactly what the power of film was meant to accomplish.