Review: Mister Foe (2007)

[dnb at dca.net]

MISTER FOE
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2008 David N. Butterworth

**1/2 (out of ****)


     Hallam Foe likes to watch.  Through binoculars, through the city's
cracked clock face, through a flat's rooftop skylight--this
post-pubescent voyeur likes to witness, unobserved, the comings and
goings of his unsuspecting neighbors.

     Following the tragic death of his mother (the coroner ruled it a
suicidal drowning but Hallam suspects otherwise, foul play on the part
of his conniving yet not unattractive step-mother), the angst-ridden
teenager has taken to his tree house, built for him by his Pa, to watch
young lovers making out below, or to spy on his father and new wife
themselves, their intimate moments unsuspectingly paraded across
Hallam's viewfinder.

     High atop his treetop sanctuary Hallam whiles away his dismal,
depressing days, a poster-sized blow-up of his mother's face peering
down approvingly at the young man who daubs his face and chest with
scarlet lipstick, an emboldened warrior preparing for the hunt.

     A confusing, erotic run-in with his stepmom forces Hallam to flee
the crumbling ancestral estate to the unfamiliar confines of the big
city, where his youthful charm and ebullience quickly secure him work as
a kitchen porter in a swank Glasgow hotel.  Attracted to the hotel's
personnel manager (who just so happens to bear a striking resemblance to
his dearly departed mother), Hallam begins to stalk Kate Breck after
hours, following her home, climbing her drainpipe, and watching her,
undetected, from his rooftop retreat.  Sometimes she's alone, other
times she's physically engaged with another, and Hallam's Freudian
peeping Tom doesn't miss a thing.

     In time Hallam will come to form more than a mere platonic
relationship with his pretty professional employer before returning to
the country to settle a familial score.

     David MacKenzie's "Mister Foe" is another bleak, dreary, but not
uninteresting Scottish drama tinged with sexual paranoia/excitement. 
Like MacKenzie's previous film, "Young Adam," which starred Ewan
McGregor and Tilda Swinton in varying positions, "Mister Foe"'s
protagonists couple at random, almost as if to simply get out of the
rain.  The film is based on Peter Jinks's novel "Hallam Foe"; apparently
Magnolia Pictures didn't think American audiences were quite
sophisticated enough to handle that title.

     As Hallam, Jamie Bell (best known Stateside for his role as the
working class ballet dancer "Billy Elliot") projects the right amount of
innocence and unchecked sexuality his character needs.  He's brittle and
forceful yet naive to the world around him, a symptom of his sheltered
upbringing.  Kate, played by Sophia Myles ("Tristan + Isolde"'s Isolde),
is herself self-assured and confident but her relationship with a
married co-worker preys on Hallam, prompting action.  Ciaran Hinds and
Claire Forlani play the parental units efficiently and effectively.

     There's nothing particularly new or exceptional about "Mister Foe,"
an earthy coming-of-age drama with pretensions of something grander, but
Bell and Myles are worth watching, even fully clothed.  But it says
something about your film's overall tone when not one but two bit
players are credited as "Grumpy Glaswegian."


-- 
David N. Butterworth, Film Editor
www.offoffoff.com/film | dnb at dca.net