Saoirse Ronan, Paul Mescal and Aaron Pierre star in Garth Davies' unnerving sci-fi drama, based on Iain Reid's novel about a couple's disturbed existence in an America ravaged by climate change.
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 4th 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.
Published 19 Oct 2023
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