'Foe' is an awkward mix of Terrence Malick and Philip K. Dick
Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan try mightily to overcome histrionic sci-fi drama.
One devastating effect of climate change that isn’t often talked about is that if crops are destroyed by warming temperatures, people won’t be able to lazily run their fingers through fields of wheat like in a Terrence Malick movie.
Garth Davis’ “Foe” is an ungainly mix of Philip K. Dick dystopian sci-fi and Malick-ian visual splendor that strands two wonderful actors, Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan, in a movie that doesn’t give them much to do but full-throttle emoting.
“Blade Runner”-style opening text tells us that the world has been ravaged by climate change, and “human substitute” clones have been created to work in parts of the planet hostile to human life. The words are such a glaring clue of the “big twist” that’s coming later in the movie (co-written by Davis and Iain Reid, adapting Reid’s book) that we spend much of the movie waiting impatiently for it to catch up with what we already know is going to happen.
The arid farm of Junior (Paul Mescal) and his wife Hen (Saoirse Ronan) seems to be on the cusp of destruction, and their marriage doesn’t seem to be in much better shape. Davis focuses more on their fractured relationship than the sci-fi trappings, which would be fine, except most of the couple’s scenes are melodramatic and histrionic together. Ronan and Mescal do their best, but Davis (“Lion”) seems to encourage them to leave no expression unexpressed, and the performers often go from one emotional extreme to the opposite in the course of one scene. It feels like an acting exercise more than a coherent performance.
A stranger named Terrance (Aaron Pierre) arrives, a representative from Outermore, the government-corporate entity that runs the world. Terrance tells Junior that he’s being recruited to work on the space station that humanity is fleeing to as the earth flickers out. Terrance is polite and charming, but won’t take no for an answer.
He even makes a deeply creepy offer to the couple – while Junior is gone, the company will provide a flesh-and-blood “human substitute” to keep Hen company. (I guess their marriage counts as a “part of the planet hostile to human life”?)
Everybody starts acting very strangely, there are spittle-flying arguments and sweaty sex scenes, and none of it makes much sense until the big reveal, when it makes even less sense.
At least the movie looks great, with the dusty outback of Australia transformed into a Midwestern dust bowl. But it’s in staring into those empty spaces that we can’t help wishing more was going on in “Foe.”
“Foe” is now streaming on Prime Video.
Too bad. The book was good but I can see how it would be tough to adapt. I’ve read several of Reid’s books and his plots rely on the reader having NO FREAKING IDEA what is going on for a large chunk of the story. And it’s easier, I suppose, to hide things with words than with visuals. The adaptation of I’m Thinking of Ending Things was pretty good, though the end was a bit muddy for me. Charlie Kaufman’s sense of weird matched better with the source material, perhaps.