Film review: Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal excel in the outstanding 'Foe'

Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal in Foe.

• Foe
• ★★★★★
• Cinema release

Opening in 2056, when global resources are growing increasingly scarce in the face of climate catastrophe, Foe (15A) stars Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal as Hen and Junior, a married couple scraping a living from their farm in the parched American Midwest.

When Terrance (Aaron Pierre) arrives to inform Junior that he has been selected for off-planet migration to work on a space station orbiting Earth, Junior refuses to leave Hen to work the farm alone. 

No problem, says Terrance — the Outermore corporation will provide Hen with an exact replica of Junior while he’s away, a stand-in that is ‘a self-determining life-form’. 

Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal in Foe.

Exactly how the artificial intelligence stand-in might differ from Junior is never spelled out (and nor does anyone ask why, if the stand-in is as sophisticated as Terrance suggests, it can’t be sent to work on the space station instead), but the potential for marital disaster is immediately clear, and especially as Hen is far more creative and free-spirited than the brutish, emotionally stunted Junior.

How Hen and Junior deal with this existential threat to their marriage provides the movie with its gripping plot, but the real joy here is in the performances, with Ronan and Mescal both in terrific form as they tease out the minutiae of an imperilled relationship that might just respond to shock treatment (in an idle moment you might find yourself hoping that this is just the first of a series of films to star the pair, a la Hepburn and Tracy).

Claustrophobic, intense, profound and shocking, Foe is the kind of smart, challenging sci-fi that slips under the skin and into your dreams.