by Robert Bouffard, Editor
The director of the critically acclaimed Lion, Garth Davis. Four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan. Oscar nominee, and current Hollywood rising star, Paul Mescal. A romantic sci-fi story. What could go wrong?
Well, with Foe, it’s not as much about what went wrong as it is about some smaller missed opportunities. For one thing, it has a tired premise: A smalltime American is whisked off to space to do some mission to learn about a potentially more viable existence for humanity. For another, it mixes that tired premise with an up-and-coming one: To keep the partner of the person leaving company, we need to clone the person leaving. Mixing these two ideas together has the potential to create something unique. But Foe is too preoccupied with how great it is to be combining these ideas to focus on any single one of them. Therefore, it’s a tangled disarray with some interesting ideas, which happens to be under two hours while feeling like two and a half.
I love Davis’ debut feature, Lion, but after Mary Magdalene and this, I’m wondering if that initial outing was a fluke — Ronan and Mescal put in watchable performances seemingly despite Davis, not because of him (and it has me appreciating Dev Patel’s performance in Lion even more than I already did). Even still, they both feel like caricatures — Ronan’s Hen is the wife who just wants her husband to talk to her and show her affection, and Mescal’s Junior is the bit-too-macho husband who wants — no, needs — to do things on his own. But even though they’re barely given anything interesting to work with, Ronan and Mescal are what carry Foe.
That is, their performances and the central air of mystery around the plot as a whole. Terrance (Aaron Pierre) comes to the couple’s house to give them the news that Junior must go to space, but something feels off about him. What it is, and who is in on the potential conspiracy, will keep you on the edge of your seat for most of the movie. But not because it’s that taught — rather, the film commits one of the cardinal sins of movies in my mind: It has a good element of mystery that’s enough to drag you along for a while, but it drags on for so long that you begin to get extra frustrated when you’re 80 minutes in and you still don’t completely know what’s going on or who to trust.
This frustration is built up thanks to too many angsty looks (and other actions) from our hot leads, and not much else. Once the mystery is finally addressed and made clear, though, it’s admittedly a good reveal. And it would have been more effective in a better movie. But instead, the couple of shots that would have made good final moments have way too much happening after them. People who say Return of the King has too many endings should just watch this, because after ending number two or three, you’ll find yourself more unsure than ever about who is who, what is what, and most importantly, why is why.
Foe has plenty of good moments, breathtaking images, and solid seeds of ideas, but it sadly ends up being a jumbled mess that, despite its leads, doesn’t amount to anything concrete. A missed opportunity.
Rating: It Was Just Okay
Foe is currently playing in theaters
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