Foe review: Why is a film about robot clones starring Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal so boring?

Any desire to see two of Ireland’s bright, young things – Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal – finally united on screen will be swiftly drained by Foe, a sci-fi drama desiccated of meaning. They’ve been coupled up here, playing young lovers out on a Midwestern farm. She, Henrietta, wears calf-grazing, tradwife skirts. He, Junior, has on a James Dean uniform (jeans and a white T-shirt, with the sleeves rolled up). Their Terrence Malick, Days of Heaven role-play is rudely interrupted by the arrival of a strange man, Terrance (Aaron Pierre), who informs them that Junior has been hand-picked to colonise space.

It is, in fact, not 1965, but 2065 – fresh water and habitable land are now rare commodities. Humanity has not been able to fix the problems on Earth, so we’ve opted simply to abandon it. Junior will be a canary in the metaphorical space mine, set out into the galaxy to test whether a person can thrive amongst the stars. Henrietta, Terrance adds, will be duly compensated: with an AI substitute for her absentee husband, so fleshy and freethinking that she’ll barely recognise the difference.

But, first, Terrance has to stick around and observe the couple, so that Junior’s replacement can be as accurate as possible. His presence alone – an interruption to the status quo – triggers earthquakes in the lives of these wistful, lustful, American dream types, their brows perpetually slick with sweat. Henrietta drapes herself mournfully over dead trees, as she watches her man work the land; Junior, puffed up by turmoil and envy, punches holes in the stained, floral wallpaper of their home.

Ronan and Mescal try their best to connect on screen here, but it’s impossible to shake the knowledge that this is all merely the performance of passion, a false dream captured by Matyas Erdely’s sun-streaked cinematography. A braver film could have even lent into that artificiality, almost as a sly commentary on AI and self-identity – ideas that inevitably consume the film’s third act and its thuddingly obvious climactic twists.

This is the third feature by Garth Davis, following his Rooney Mara/Joaquin Phoenix starrer Mary Magdalene and the adoption drama Lion. His usual self-seriousness and sincerity seem ill at ease with the material he’s adapting, even if his script was co-written alongside its source novel’s author, Iain Reid. The first of Reid’s books to make it to screen, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, felt poles apart from this. Directed by the surrealist Charlie Kaufman, the Jessie Buckley-led Netflix film was complex and dreamlike in its structure, with room for all kinds of emotional contradictions and tricky thoughts. Foe is far too plain-spoken. “He doesn’t really see me anymore,” Henrietta laments. “It’s as if he’s replaced me with someone else.” She does so several scenes before anyone’s even mentioned the robot clones.

There are other questions for Foe to ponder. Terrance (who Pierre plays as a cool-headed enigma) asks Junior whether he wants to live a mundane life or open himself up to the possibilities of the cosmos. Foe, as a film, settles comfortably for the former. It’s easier, it seems, to chase after Tennessee Williams-sized exasperations, with Mescal a hair’s breadth away from shaking his fists in the air and screaming, “Henrieeeeetttttttaaaaaa!” From what I’ve heard, he did the Stanley Kowalski schtick a lot better on stage – when he actually played Stanley Kowalski.

Dir: Garth Davis. Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Paul Mescal, Aaron Pierre. 15, 110 minutes.

‘Foe’ is in cinemas from 20 October