Foe: LFF Film Review
Foe, starring Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal, has received scathing reviews and currently has 23% on Rotten Tomatoes. While it’s not the complete trainwreck it’s been made out to be, it’s baffling and misguided.
The film, directed by Garth Davis, is set in the American Midwest in 2065. Earth hasn’t had rain in a long time so fresh water is scarce and the land is becoming uninhabitable. Junior (Mescal) is called up to go into space and live on a new space station for two years and an AI duplicate is created to keep his wife Henrietta (Ronan) company while he is away.
Foe falls victim to timing and comparison. The premise is virtually the same as the Beyond the Sea episode of Black Mirror, which only came out a few months ago. And the problem is that Black Mirror did the concept better. I feel sorry for the Foe team because I think the film would have fared better with some distance.
It’s not completely the same though. Beyond the Sea splits its time between space and Earth whereas this sci-fi is a dialogue-heavy domestic drama that mostly takes place inside a remote farmhouse. It focuses more on the marriage between Junior and Henrietta and how it is affected by the prospect of his imminent conscription. Their OuterMore representative Terrance (Aaron Pierre) regularly interviews them to find out what makes them tick in order to make Junior’s double as realistic as possible and ends up driving a wedge between them.
The script for this movie, based on Iain Reid‘s novel of the same name, is odd. There are weird tonal changes and character mood swings that make no sense. Plus, the characters have big dramatic moments that are jarring because they come out of nowhere and don’t gel with the context of the scene they’re in.
The actors are innocent though. Ronan and Mescal throw all they’ve got into their roles even when their characters’ actions are super confusing. Mescal has the meatier, showier role so his work is more obvious but they both really go for it. Pierre is a solid addition as the mysterious middleman – he plays quite an unsettling figure in their home because you don’t know whether he can be trusted.
With Foe, it seems like Davis was aiming for something profound but couldn’t quite find it – and what’s left is an emotionally empty and tonally confused film.
Seen at the London Film Festival. In cinemas Friday 20th October and Prime Video Friday 5th January