MISTER FOE
Directed by David Mackenzie
Produced by Gillian Berrie
Written by Mackenzie & Ed Whitmore, based on a novel by Peter Jinks
Released by Magnolia Pictures
UK. 95 min. Not Rated
With Jamie Bell, Sophia Myles, Ciarán Hinds, Claire Forlaini, Jamie Sives, Maurice Roëves & Ewen Bremner
 

“I’m a real human being,” says Kate (Sophia Myles), the beautiful older woman that 18-year-old misfit Hallam Foe (Jamie Bell) has been spying on because she reminds him of his dead mother. “Sometimes I want sweet. Sometimes I want sour. Sometimes I don’t know what I want. My shit stinks. I’m going to die someday.”

David Mackenzie’s outsider coming-of-age story, Mister Foe, is equal parts sweet and sour. It’s a mixture of great writing, magnetic performances, and a sensibility that’s at once dark and gentle.

In the beginning, teen voyeur Hallam lives in a tree house hideaway on his family’s estate in the Scottish highlands, covering himself with war paint, wearing a skunk skin over his head, and spying on lovers. Inside this refuge, he has built a wall-sized shrine to his mother, but his architect father (Ciarán Hinds) has moved on too quickly, marrying his secretary, Verity (Claire Forlaini), who wants Hallam out of the picture. His hostility is more than palpable—Hallam believes she’s responsible for his mother’s drowning death.

Forlaini’s portrayal of Verity is dazzling. She fully embodies the evil stepmother archetype, and even looks like the murderous queen in Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. There’s ambiguity to Verity as well as the others in the film—we never quite know how much of what we’re seeing is Hallam’s fantasy and how much is cold reality.

After a nasty and carnal confrontation with Verity, Hallam flees to Edinburgh and finds a job as a hotel kitchen porter through following human resources manager Kate to work, who he first sees on the street and immediately notices his mother’s resemblance. Though he’s scrubbing plates, he’s still in daily proximity to Kate, and has taken residence in a bell tower directly across from her apartment. Whether with his binoculars or through her rooftop windows, he spies on her in her everyday life—practicing kickboxing, having dirty sex with a married coworker, or just sleeping.

As Kate, Sophia Myles delivers my favorite performance by an actress in the past few years. She’s sweet without being at all simple or trivial. In a lesser film, we’d have to suspend some serious disbelief to imagine this poised woman sleeping with a messed-up teenager after learning that he’s been hanging out on the rooftops staring through her window, but Myles shows how Kate connects with Hallam, how they touch each other. Their romance involves real growth for both of them. Kate is a brave character in some ways, and this is a brave, naked performance, the kind that gains rather than loses power through its vulnerability.   

Mister Foe is one of those unapologetic films that asks you to root for its protagonist no matter how messed up he is, and it truly works. It also artfully brings age-old, fairy tale themes into an edgy, contemporary context (enhanced with a throbbing soundtrack by bands like Franz Ferdinand and U.N.P.O.C.), with a voyeur’s view of the nighttime city. Elizabeth Bachner
August 29, 2008