I didn’t know what I would be walking into when I sat down in my theater seat to see this new film from Amazon/MGM called FOE. See, after all these years reviewing films, I often try to avoid trailers or press about a film. Going in blind helps, and I like going in without any expectations or desires, for this may be about or not. So, after seeing this film, what is FOE actually? It’s a story about a young couple in a near future of the Midwest United States ravaged by climate change and a lack of water affecting farming and the overall way of life. The two live pretty much alone out there. Paul Mescal plays Junior, and Saoirse Ronan plays Henrietta, who both work dead-end jobs and just have each other in a somewhat distant marriage for a young couple. One evening, their life is thrown upside down when they are visited by a man named Terrance (Aaron Pierre), who is there to tell Junior he’s been chosen to go into space to work on a Satellite to help make it as a livable place for humanity as the Earth is getting harder and harder to live on. The film then deals with the couple grappling with Junior having to leave a year from this day and how they grow back together. Yet something else bothers Junior about Terrence and his not wanting to leave his wife.
This film, I feel, at times tries to work in some thriller elements that I feel it is not successful at building to. I do think the performances of the three actors are all very good. I think the core drama about Junior and Henrietta works very well. Mescal plays Junior as a man holding his wife back, both needy and manipulative. There are moments when he seems to be getting better and acknowledging her wants and her being, but then the way he plays his lack of trust in Terrence, who at a point ends up living with them as part of the process, seems to overtake him. Ronan has yet to show me a bad performance in a film or show. I think the camera leers on her a bit too much for my tastes in some scenes, making me a bit uncomfortable. While I haven’t read many other reviews, I have seen the plausible science fiction setting and elements seem to be a sticking point for many, but those elements worked well for me. They don’t distract from the intimate story of the two characters for me at all. It adds those stresses and hardships and feels a bit more relatable than setting this in the early 20th-century Midwest. Seeing a person in a self-driving car doesn’t distract, and maybe it deals with stuff talked about too much in the current dialogue that they are turned off. This might also be the case for you, so I’d say consider that when considering seeing this film. For me, this was an enjoyable, intimate film and something I’d watch again.
Score: B
