Directed by Garth Davis
Starring Saoirse Ronan, Paul Mescal, and Aaron Pierre.

My home city of Melbourne, Victoria is renowned for many things. Its eclectic and marvellous food culture and its outstanding coffee, to name a couple. The state of Victoria is also the birthplace of AFL (Australian Rules Football) and also happens to be where Foe is entirely shot. In AFL, when a team is consistently among the best in the competition for 2 or more years running, we like to say that team is in their ‘premiership window’, meaning they stand a high chance of winning the grand final in that year. Substituting AFL for the competition of the global film industry now, this is precisely where I consider phenomenal actress Saoirse Ronan currently being ranked at her chances of winning a first-ever Academy Award ®. After all, she has already been nominated 4 times in her just 29 years of age! Sadly though, Foe will definitely not be the film to earn Saoirse her 5th nomination, due to no fault of her own.

Based on a novel of the same name by Iain Reid, Foe sets itself in futuristic Midwest America where climate change has had severe repercussions on habitable life on Earth. In fact, habitable land and water are our most precious commodities. On a remote farm, the unhappily married Hen (Saoirse Ronan) lives only with her irritable husband Junior (Paul Mescal) in his 5th generation family home. It’s a sheltered existence until one night a stranger pulls up in the driveway, knocks at the door, and requests to come in for a conversation. Terrance (Aaron Pierre), a government official, brings unwelcoming news to Hen and Junior that will completely change their quiet existence, for better or for worse.

I am being truthful here when I say I really don’t like to be too critical of films. I appreciate a lot of people spend a lot of time working hard on the project that is the director’s vision and/or dream. When criticising, I often lean more towards constructive criticism over simply slamming and shaming a movie to oblivion. It’s just how I prefer to roll. This self-given assignment becomes a greater challenge though when encountering a film as poorly conceived, written, and executed as Foe! I also keep my reviews spoiler-free. I will honour this core component of my writing but do feel I need to mention a little more than I ordinarily prefer to in order to justify my critiquing of the movie.

The first thing I must say is that Foe is flat-out boring. A complete and utter snoozefest. Should I fly long-distance over the Christmas period and have trouble sleeping, I hope the airline has Foe available for viewing. Yes, it is THAT boring. Next, its premise, plot development and conclusion. Despite developing its initial premise at snail pace during a bloated first act, it does present some intriguing ideas. That is until it dawned on me that Foe has no intention of actually taking us where it suggests, both visually and thematically. Instead, the film uses Terrance’s forced proposition to explore and try to resuscitate an already dead relationship that ultimately renders its original premise, ideas, and its futuristic setting redundant. To add to its pointlessness, several rather absurd developments occur that make the film even more distancing and incongruous than it is already becoming. It’s difficult to think of ways Foe could’ve become more watchable, but I believe it would at least be a better movie if it had made its location and time setting more of a feature than it does. Taking us to their slaughterhouse (are there even enough people left to eat all those chickens!?) and diner (in the middle of bloody nowhere!) workplaces for the occasional brief excursion are never enough to convince it is 2065 in Midwest America. Foe could have conceived and utilised so much of Hen and Junior’s surrounds (aside from the isolation) in its exploration of their relationship and made this, among other facets, an integral part of the story. Not to mention, it’s a complete waste of the immense talents and appealing pairing of Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal. 

Foe is showing in selected cinemas across Australia from November 2nd.

Moviedoc thanks Transmission and TM Publicity for the invite to the screening of this film.

Review by Leigh for Moviedoc

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