‘Foe’ movie review: bizarre sci-fi drama misses the mark
On paper, the new film from Australian director Garth Davis looks set to be an intriguing and original movie. Starring Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan as young married couple Junior and Hen, Foe follows the tensions and strains placed on their relationship after Terrence, a mysterious government agent, arrives and informs them that Junior must leave Hen for a year as part of a grand journey into space – to save humanity.
The point in future or the state of civilisation is not ambiguous: it is the year 2065, the world is being ravaged by ecological collapse, and mankind must begin preparing for its mass exodus off Planet Earth and to greener pastures beyond the stars. That is, however, the extent of the world-building – director Davis makes a deliberate, conscious and admirable decision to root the story in the deeply personal.
Foe is not a large-scale story about the fate of humanity. Despite some questionably identical images of rural farmhouses and apocalyptic dust storms blazing across the plains, it is not attempting to present us with something epic and expansive like Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. Instead, Davis seeks to use the trappings of a science-fiction movie and use it as a vehicle to explore the profoundly intimate and personal – a speculative prompt with which to interrogate the notions of love, loyalty, trust and memory, not as broad themes, but as specific feelings between two very distinct and initially unhappy people. Feelings that are, as Davis puts it, “simple and urgent”.
The central conceit of Davis’ film is that during Junior’s one-year absence, an Artificially Intelligent, biomechanical replicant of him will be installed in their home to care for and provide company to Hen. This news is brought to them in the middle of the night when Terrence arrives in a Blade Runner-esque retro-futuristic electric car that pulses with green light. The picture of overt science-fiction lighting contrasts nicely with the rugged and desolate fields of the Midwest, and this is perhaps one of the movie’s finest points – it presents the audience with occasional moments of genuinely beautiful and original imagery.
Terrence informs the couple that Junior has been shortlisted for this pioneering space program and that the government will take a year to decide on the lone candidate. He leaves. With a formal countdown introduced, we begin a fragmented and poetic exploration of Hen and Junior receiving a blissful second honeymoon. With the unnerving presence of Terrence gone, a renewed spark of passion ignites between the two, and they enjoy a year of uninterrupted love.
We see snapshots of them at their workplaces: Junior as an assembly line grunt, bleaching and processing chicken corpses by the thousands, while Hen attends to the small-town patrons of a highway diner. One minute, the couple are arguing at the dinner table, the simmering tension boiling over – the next, they’re frolicking in nearby fields and having sex under the ruins of agricultural infrastructure. However, Terrence eventually returns and informs them that Junior has been chosen. The grim reality of Junior’s imminent year-long absence and replacement by an unknown, man-made entity finally sinks in.
It all has the potential to be exciting and engaging stuff, particularly boasting such a stellar duo of Pascal and Ronan – both supremely talented young actors. Unfortunately, and surprisingly, the result is a genuinely underwhelming and sometimes bewildering experience that makes its modest run-time of 1 hour 40 minutes feel like a nearly three-hour affair. The biggest problem, at the start anyway, lies with Terrence. It’s clear what the filmmakers want this character to represent: a charming yet unnerving stranger who arrives unannounced to infiltrate their home – and relationship.
Yet, several decisions made by Davis, ranging from the casting to the writing, completely rob the character of any sense of threat or hostility necessary to see the movie’s entire plot through. It’s certainly no fault of the actor, Aaron Pierre, nor is the lack of chemistry between Hen and Junior, which is crucial to the film’s emotional arc, the fault of Ronan or Pascal. Davis has to be admired for his commitment to the type of film he wanted to make, but he, unfortunately, fumbles with quite a few of the elements needed to pull it off.
There are several glaring problems with the world-building – for instance, there’s no hint or presence of a broader government nor any indication that Terrence is operating as anything other than a lone agent. This in itself could be an exciting concept to play with (is he actually who he says he is?), but Hen and Junior simply cry and shout about it a lot and then accept it at face value. It feels completely off – as an audience, we’re given no reason to believe Terrence, even if Hen and Junior seemingly do.
The focus, however, is on the tone and form of the thing. And credit goes to Davis for his dedication to crafting an abstract, dreamy and surreal collage within the confines of a sci-fi. The disheartening thing is, I’m more than game for a movie that places atmosphere over narrative – if only the writing were a bit better. The dialogue between the characters is, at best, surreal. At worst, it’s either clunky and faux-philosophical or highlighting improvisation that simply didn’t land.
Despite the talents of Pascal and Ronan, it’s hard not to wince when one of them stops gazing at the horizon, turns to the other, and suddenly asks, “Do you ever think about dying?” As you’d expect with a film dealing with AI replacements or cloning, like the much superior recent Black Mirror episode ‘Beyond The Sea’ (which bears a striking similarity to Foe), identity is a central theme. The problem is, before you can start questioning Junior’s identity, you’ve discovered that Foe barely has found its own.
