Borderline

by Mike McGranaghan

Borderline Personality Disorder is a mental health condition where people have difficulty regulating their emotions, leading to fractured relationships and impulsive behaviors, among other things. Mental health advocates probably won’t take too kindly to the comedy Borderline, which portrays the ailment in a broad manner. Viewers less concerned with accuracy may get some good laughs from the movie. It marks the directorial debut of Jimmy Warden, writer of that most refined of motion pictures, Cocaine Bear.

Paul Duerson (Ray Nicholson) is an escaped mental patient obsessed with pop singer Sofia (Samara Weaving). Together with assistant/fellow escapee Penny (Alba Baptista), he shows up at Sofia’s mansion, thinking they’re going to get married. Her bodyguard (Eric Dane) tries to keep him out, while her most recent sexual conquest (Jimmie Fails) simply wants to go home. Duerson forces his way in, leading to a series of comic delusions as he attempts to pull off his dream wedding to a woman who wants nothing to do with him.

Borderline has a bare-bones plot and single-dimensional characters. Normally, those qualities would be considerable flaws in a film. Not here, though. Warden seems interested in observing how people react in a chaotic situation. He creates a doozy of one, then throws a bunch of hapless souls into the insanity. The reason why it’s funny is because everything is so unpredictable, from how the wedding proceeds to the efforts made by Sofia and her associates to foil Duerson’s plan. You genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen from second to second, and that anything-goes spirit yields big laughs.

Warden shows some behind-the-camera creativity in telling this bizarre tale. The movie has an incredible unbroken shot that the players wander through during different time periods. It starts in the present with a couple actors looking out a window. When they leave the frame as the camera pans down, others come in to show us what happened a few moments prior. They walk off, allowing the shot to resume in the here and now. Clever staging of that sort is used throughout to keep viewers on their toes.

Ray Nicholson is very good as Duerson. Even though the character is a cartoonish representation of borderline personality, he manages to bring a hint of humanity to his performance. The actor convinces us that this delusional man really does have feelings for Sofia. Samara Weaving, a staple of horror/dark comedy movies, has an endless array of humorous reactions to the singer’s dilemma. She lights up the screen with a nicely deadpan turn. Speaking of deadpan, I thought Jimmie Fails was monotonous and empty until the ending. That’s when you realize his choice to make the character so flat pays off with a comedic jackpot during the finale.

Borderline packs a lot of craziness – and outrageous violence – into its tight 94-minute running time. Thanks to a sharp screenplay and a game cast, it wins you over with a risk-taking style of storytelling.

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