A grim look at marriage in the future

 

   Foe takes place in 2065. As is almost always the case these days, the future looks even worse than the present, so much so that corporations want to establish colonies in space. 

   Steeped in Gothic austerity, Foe — based on a novel by Lain Reid, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Garth Davis — displays  palpable ambition as it deals with marriage, artificial intelligence, gender roles, and crushed dreams.

   Working with two fine actors (Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal), Davis mixes elements from various periods, using anachronistic music and introducing futuristic sci-fi concepts that unfold when a stranger (Aaron Pierre) visits the farm where Hen (Ronan) and Junior (Mescal) live in isolation.

    Smooth-talking and assured, Pierre's Terrance represents vaguely defined corporate and governmental interests.  He informs the couple that they’ve been short-listed for an important experiment. If they pass vigorous tests, they’ll qualify to spend a couple of  years on a space station called The Installation, part of a strategy to ensure human survival once the world starts running on empty.

    As the story evolves, we learn that only Junior has been selected. Hen (short for Henrietta) will remain behind. Junior has no choice in the matter; he’s been conscripted, a human guinea pig.

     Lest she be lonely, Hen will be supplied with a substitute human, a replicant that precisely mirrors everything about Junior: his appearance, his memories, and his ability to simulate the ardor that once pervaded their now-flagging relationship.

     Hen and Junior aren't exactly overachievers. Junior works at an industrial chicken farm and Hen earns a bit of money as a waitress, but there’s little reference to the world beyond the couple’s 200-year-old Midwestern farmhouse. They’re like prisoners sharing the same cell.

      Tension mounts when Terrance moves in with the couple as part of Junior's prep and to help develop Junior’s replacement.

     That’s a lot of exposition for a movie that’s less interested in sci-fi or even plot than in creating space for the relationship between Hen, Junior, and Terrance to settle, bounce off the walls, and grope toward resolution.

        An essential conflict emerges. Junior sees no reason to abandon the grim horizons of the farm that has been in his family for generations; longing for something more, Hen remembers she once could see a future for herself.

        A dusty piano that’s kept in the farm-house basement represents a side of Hen that her marriage forced her to bury. And Junior’s name suggests a man/child who never has found a pathway to maturity. 

        Ronan’s performance can be both sensuous and resentful; in the showier role, Mescal dips into Junior's madness, despair and simmering rage.

        Foe sets up a dynamic in which we wonder whether Terrance’s stated goals mask another agenda. A score by Park Jiha and Oliver Coates suggests deeper mysteries than the movie embraces, serving as a kind of on-going tease.

        I’ve waited to pass critical judgement on Davis’s work because that’s how I experienced the movie, an unsettling waiting game that asks for a delayed response.

        Foe tries to go deep but only half succeeds. It’s like a replicant of an art movie, almost convincing, but never quite hitting the thematic high notes that could have lifted it from the grey zone in which the movie, like Junior, seems stuck.

   

        

A harrowing childhood journey

Another movie based on a true story, Lion can be heartbreaking, but it also can lag.

In a way, Lion risks setting itself up for failure -- or at least for a major letdown.

I say this because the movie's opening act is so compelling that I wondered whether director Garth Davis would be able to sustain its harrowing trajectory. In the early going, Lion feels as if it's en route to becoming a classic movie about an endangered boy, something on the order of the great Brazilian film, Pixote -- if a little less harsh.

Working from a true story, Davis introduces us to five-year-old Saroo (a wonderful Sunny Pawar), a poor Indian boy who's separated from his family after he falls asleep on a decommissioned train. Saroo winds up in Calcutta where his life takes on a Dickensian flavor: He's homeless and defenseless.

Saroo is too young to explain himself to strangers who live 1,600 miles from where his journey began. His difficulties are further complicated by his inability to speak Bengali. He speaks only Hindi.

Even a helpful gesture from a kind stranger works against him. One such bit of help lands poor Saroo in a children's home where cruelty and abuse are the orders of the day.

Cute without being cloying, Pawar anchors this part of the movie -- along with Davis's terrific use of the Indian countryside and the squalid depravations of Calcutta. Watching a totally confused and frightened five year old trying to negotiate the teeming crowds at Calcutta's railways station makes for heartbreaking viewing.

The movie makes a major shift after its Indian sequences. As the result of a charitable intervention, Saroo is sent to Australia where he's adopted by two well-meaning and loving parents, convincingly played by Nicole Kidman and David Wenham. After about a year, Saroo's new parents adopt another Indian boy who has a more difficult time adjusting to life in Tasmania and who's played as a young adult by Divian Ladwa.

The movie's second half deals with Saroo as a young man portrayed by Dev Patel. At this point, what had been a terrific movie becomes a merely good one with the story turning its attention to Saroo's increasing desire to discover his roots. He begins having flashbacks to the early years of his childhood in India, which include memories of his older brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate) and the mother (Priyanka Bose) he adored and who adored him.

Bharate's Guddu has some responsibility for the way in which Saroo becomes lost, adding another level of poignancy.

During Saroo's period of self-discovery, he turns to the Internet to try to determine precisely where he came from. He stops paying attention to his girlfriend (a superfluous Rooney Mara), and shuts out his parents, refusing to tell them what he's doing. Patel conveys Saroo's torment, but this portion of the movie drags and also misses opportunities to develop additional scenes that might better have dramatized Saroo's struggle as a person suffering from spiritual homelessness.

None of this is to say that you should avoid Lion, which has a payoff that's designed to jerk real tears. And toward the end, Davis does a skillful job of blending Saroo's childhood memories with his adult quest.

Put in terms that risk a bit of reductionism, I'll conclude with this: Lion's Indian segments are a four-star knockout; the rest ... well ... give it three stars.