Located on the El Paso, Texas is accustomed to straddling two cultures. But for the aching drama The Mechanics of Borders, it bridged a cultural divide with Canada.
Montreal producer Maxime Bernard reached out to El Paso filmmaker Carlos F. Corral with plans to shoot director Hubert Caron-Guay’s story largely in El Paso. Corral, creative director of the El Paso Film Festival, recalled at a screening of the film Thursday night that he kept pressing Bernard on why he would travel so far.
Bernard insisted that El Paso — with its widely disparate locations, from desert to mountains to suburbs to a chameleonic downtown — was ideal. And he liked Corral’s energy.
“He said I know you’re crazy, because you run a film festival,” Corral joked in his introduction of the film Thursday.
The Mechanics of Borders, in Film and Life
The Mechanic of Borders follows Mathieu (Dylan Walsh), a former foster kid now working in a slaughterhouse. He’s quiet and withholding, prone to eruptions, and as the film unfolds we slowly form ideas about why. When his enigmatic, magnetic sister Heidi (Sophie Fekete) calls him asking her to retrieve him from a bad living situation in Tucson, he drives 2,000 miles to bring her back to Canada.
They bicker in English and French, sneak into a pool, meet a cute dog. And barriers break down.
For all the complications of a cross-border production, the transitions onscreen in The Mechanics of Borders are seamless. At one point, Mathieu and Heidi walk into a bar in El Paso, and the interior is in Montreal.
Corral, the film’s El Paso production coordinator, presented Bernard with the El Paso Film Festival’s Producers Award in a Q&A after Thursday’s screening, which also included the film’s location manager Jacob Cena (a veteran of One Battle After Another), and two of the actors in the film, Cesar Miramontes and Dali Mulato.
For all the complications of a cross-border production, the transitions onscreen in The Mechanics of Borders are seamless. At one point, Mathieu and Heidi walk into a bar in El Paso, and the interior is in Montreal.
“So, movie magic, guys,” joked Cena.
He also displayed a dazzling knowledge of El Paso locations has he explained the history of the bar — and another bar someone in the audience had mistaken it for.
If only the U.S. and Canada worked together so seamlessly in real life. Before, the film, Caron-Guay said in a video message that the film is an example of how Americans and Canadians can still do good things together, in spite of President Trump’s trade war. (A new Politico poll this week found that people on both sides of the border believe Trump was wrong to start it.)
Corral praised Bernard from the Philanthropy Theater stage for his patience, diplomacy, and uniquely northern gifts.
“When we were working on set, your demeanor was always so wonderful and professional,” Corral noted. “You’ve always been so sweet. I still have the maple syrup you give me.”
Here are more details on the El Paso Film Festival, one of our 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee. And you can read more of our film festival coverage here.
Main image: (L-R) The Mechanics of Borders location manager Jacob Cena, producer Maxime Bernard, actors Dali Mulato and Cesar Miramontes, and El Paso production coordinator Carlos Corral, who is also creative director of the El Paso Film Festival, onstage at El Paso’s Philanthropy Theater.
