Country: United States
Genre: Drama
Director: David Mackenzie
Year: 2007
Rating: 
NOT WORTH YOUR TIME
You know, in some ways, I’m a pretty straightforward guy. If a story presents itself as taking place more or less in the real world, I kind of insist on some sense of reality. The filmmakers can’t present a more or less realistic misc en scene and then insist that their story is a surrealistic playing out of Freudian issues, which is what Mister Foe really amounts to.
Young Hallam Foe (Jamie Bell) lost his mother in a drowning two years before the story starts, when he was sixteen years old. He has since retreated into isolation in his treehouse, emerging from time to time to call his stepmother Verity (Claire Forlani) a gold-digging whore and hint darkly to his father Julius (Ciarán Hinds) that Verity murdered his mother in order to bag his father and inherit the house.
Already, my bullshit detector was beeping like mad. Julius and Verity treat Hallam with kid gloves, and this abuse has been going on for two years! What kind of husband would allow his kid to call his wife a golddigging whore for two years? What kind of woman would have the patience to put on a sweet smile while her stepson repeatedly insults her to her face?
Anway, an event occurs which further shreds any pretense at believability, providing an excuse for Hallam to flee the nest. He arrives in the big city and promptly meets a lookalike of his dear mum.
I could go on, but what’s the point? Hallam has a habit of spying on others and breaking into their homes, just to fondle their possessions, but the filmmakers try to persuade us that this isn’t stalking, not really. It’s just Hallam’s reaction to his mom’s demise.
In a way, it’s sorta kinda fun to see what absurdity the filmmakers are going to come up with next, but there’s no emotional impact because what we’re seeing is so clearly nonsense.
Jamie Bell makes Hallam about as sympathetic as would be possible, given the material from the novel by Peter Jinks. Writer/director David Mackenzie makes Mister Foe visually inviting, and he coaxes good performances from his actors, but all for naught.
If Mister Foe was calculated as a trashy romp, all of the perversity might be amusing, but this movie is supposed to be deep, so it ends up being offensive, not in the sense of blindsiding your sense of morality, but rather by insulting your intelligence. It’s just twaddle, and unpleasant twaddle at that.