Foe

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://fandomwire.com/foe-bfi-london-film-festival-review-one-of-the-messiest-scripts-of-the-year/ "Foe presents one of the messiest screenplays of the year, filled with incessant, unnecessary explanations through numerous narrative and visual methods, abruptly confusing time shifts, absurdly devoid of any sort of impact, and a strange message, to say the least, about the superiority of AI in human intimate relationships. At just under two hours, it manages to slowly drag itself to a multiple-ending conclusion, none capable of delivering any relevant information that wasn't already given beforehand. The cast does the best they can, but it's way too far from enough to rescue a movie doomed to leave its audience underwhelmed." Rating: D-

Anyone think this reminds them of a poor relation of "Interstellar"? "Hen" (Saoirse Ronan) lives on her remote family farm with husband "Junior" (Paul Mescal). You get the impression it's a pretty mundane existence and maybe not have been the strongest of relationships when a stranger in what looks like an old De Lorean arrives. It turns out that "Terrance" (Aaron Pierre) has come from the supra-governmental agency that's in charge of populating space - yep, the planet is on it's last legs - and that "Junior" has been selected to go live upstairs leaving is wife behind. No chance says "Junior", no choice says "Terrance" but there is some silver lining for "Hen". They will make her a carbon copy of her husband to "keep her company" whilst he is away. To that end, their visitor must remain for a few weeks to gather information on every intimate detail of their lives together so that "Junior 2" can be as authentic as possible. Now we don't actually know this, but it's safe to assume that somewhere in the ensuing proceedings, there is a body swap otherwise the rather dreary and drawn out denouement would make even less sense that it actually does. Is this suppose to be a crit on the nature of human relationships, or of the human psyche? If you went to bed at night and awoke to an identical partner that had been swapped in the night, would you even know? That's the problem. It's a complete non-story that limbers towards it's conclusion without really engaging on any level. That said, man-of-the-moment Mescal does turn in an emotional performance at times, but Ronan is really rather wasted here and the thinly developed characterisation of "Terrance" just further consigns this to the doldrums of what looks a short story laggardly dragged out for all but two hours. It's a slow and rather listless film for the most part and contains nothing new. Disappointing.

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Manuel São Bento

CinemaSerf