[Early Review] Foe (2023)

Twin Cities Film Festival coverage

Director: Garth Davis
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Paul Mescal, Aaron Pierce
Screenplay: Iain Reid, Garth Davis
110 mins. Rated R.

I wasn’t able to attend many of the Twin Cities Film Festival screenings this year due to some personal issues that took precedence, but I was able to see the upcoming Amazon Studios film Foe. The film, which does not have a theatrical or streaming release date, was only able to be screened at the film festival because the donors for TCFF and some of the generous donations made to allow it to be screened as originally intended. So did Garth Davis follow up his Best Picture-nominated Lion favorably? The short answer is no.

Set four decades into the future, the Earth is slowly dying. There are some humans that have been selected by the government to move off planet for the purposes to making new world livable. When Henrietta (Saoirse Ronan, The Grand Budapest Hotel) and her husband Junior (Paul Mescal, Aftersun) learn that one of them has been selected for this important and inescapable task, they are both concerned as they live fairly off-the-grid and in solitude. They are informed that the spouse remaining on Earth will receive a genetic copy of their loved one in order to protect their well-being during the difficult time, but now they have a guest living in their home, Terrence (Aaron Pierce, Old), who is documenting the couple’s lives together to help get the copy ready for implantation.

Throughout the entire run time of Foe, I kept wondering when IT was going to happen. By IT, I meant that scene, the one that comes into play during the best sci-fi tales, the one that reframes the narrative and expands on the simple ideas at play, but it never really happened. I sat there, wondering when the film was going to grab me, when the plot elements would coalesce into the examination of the human condition that I could tell Davis was aiming for as a director. As it stands, the film asks a few questions, but it doesn’t give satisfying answers and certainly not quick enough to allow for Foe to rise above.

I know I’ve made this complaint a lot recently, but it stands here as well: this movie is also too damn long. There’s maybe 80 minutes of story in the 110 minutes of run time, and the way the film is edited makes the story feel like 150 minutes. The pacing just isn’t there, and as compelling as the performances are, if there isn’t enough for them to carry, they can’t carry this movie for the pace it’s been given.

I do want to highlight the performances, though. All three of the main actors are quite good, and they do the best to carry the weight of the narrative. A number of dialogue-driven scenes were overwritten, but Ronan, Mescal, and Pierre were all able to deliver their lines with truth and compassionate emotional strain. Aaron Pierre, in particular, surprised me. I had seen him in M. Night Shyamalan’s Old a few years back, but he didn’t have enough to do to get a sense of his skills. Here, he’s able to deliver his cold and disturbing portrayal of a man looking to test a relationship to its limits. Normally, I would’ve seen the loss of Lakeith Stanfield (who was originally attached to the role) as a big problem, but Pierre provides a perfectly menacing and mysterious antagonist.

Strong performances and a few interesting ideas do not make a cohesive narrative, though, and Foe is riddled with overwriting and a plodding, directionless script. Several of the main twists and turns of the plot were easy choice reveals that the audience could see a mile away, and near the end, the entire story seems to crumble under its own weight. It’s fine enough for a solid set of performances, but not something I can recommend, and certainly not something I’ll remember for long.

2.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe