Foe review – bewitch­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing­ly plausible

When it comes to the cli­mate apoc­a­lypse, we’ve already passed about 20 pre­dict­ed dead­lines for the ​“point of no return”. And maybe we are. Could plans for the future be just part of a far-reach­ing denial, and we can’t actu­al­ly save the plan­et by rais­ing aware­ness, retweet­ing Gre­ta Thun­berg and re-using our water bot­tles? Just how clear would the writ­ing on the wall have to be in order to accept that every­thing is well and tru­ly fucked? This bone-chill­ing thought begets the best and fun­ni­est moment of Foe, set in 2065 when the major­i­ty of the world’s chil­dren have nev­er seen rain. But not all hope is lost, and a Live Aid Style giant fundrais­er aims to heal a plan­et clear­ly well past salvation.

The con­cert is watched on a crack­ling tele­vi­sion by Junior (Paul Mescal) and Hen (Saoirse Ronan) who live a qui­et life in the now bar­ren Amer­i­can Mid­west, in the ram­shackle farm­house that has been in Junior’s fam­i­ly for gen­er­a­tions. Hen works in a din­er, Junior in a dystopi­an chick­en fac­to­ry that neat­ly jux­ta­pos­es with the idyl­lic farm life the house would have once been in the cen­tre of. But their inaus­pi­cious exis­tence dur­ing the count­down to the apoc­a­lypse is inter­rupt­ed by a mys­te­ri­ous stranger cruis­ing up in the mid­dle of the night in a self-dri­ving car.

The man intro­duces him­self as Ter­rence and is played with a preter­nat­ur­al lev­el of cool by Aaron Pierre. Ter­race explains he works for the gov­ern­ment and that Junior has been select­ed to spend two years on a space coloni­sa­tion pro­to­type mis­sion. His par­tic­i­pa­tion is not option­al. How­ev­er, in order to make the years Junior will be in space more palat­able, the gov­ern­ment will present Hen with a clone of him to keep her com­pa­ny. Ter­rence is then tasked with observ­ing Junior and their rela­tion­ship in order to repli­cate the dynam­ic as accu­rate­ly as possible…or so he claims.

Foe works best if you meet it on its own terms. It’s a weird nar­ra­tive choice to promise the audi­ence a space sta­tion and then con­fine the action to the few square miles around the farm­house, and the ​“sci” in the ​“sci-fi” is feath­erlight. Garth Davis is not par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in using the genre to reflect on the future or the present and instead cre­ates an uncan­ny ver­sion of our real­i­ty that keeps the audi­ence per­pet­u­al­ly ill at ease. With­in this slight­ly queasy and con­found­ing world, the film pokes and prods at his character’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and resent­ments. Ronan, Pierre and Mescal make for an intrigu­ing trio, vac­il­lat­ing with para­noia, pos­tur­ing and peer­ing long­ing­ly at one another.

It’s engross­ing and pur­pose­ful­ly strange, and the images of this cli­mate-change-rav­aged world of dried lakes and bar­ren grass­lands are bewitch­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing­ly plau­si­ble. But when the inevitable twist comes, it makes about as much sense as using a fundrais­ing mod­el Bob Geld­of threw togeth­er in the 80s to stave off the 4^th horse­man of the apoc­a­lypse. Still, it’s hard not to admire a film that so deter­mined­ly zigs when you would expect it to zag, and if the end is indeed night, we might as well spend the pre­cious time we have left with Aaron Pierre.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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