Sometimes all a movie needs is attractive people speaking in
beautiful British accents. Mister Foe, which offers up such
lovelies as Jamie Bell, Sophia Myles, Ewen Bremner, Ciaran Hinds, and
Claire Forlani strapping on a mixture of Scots brogues and Irish burrs,
would come highly recommended on that level, even if it didn’t also
feature genuinely pervy story elements, compellingly complex
relationships, a brilliant soundtrack of Scotland’s finest indie rock,
and a dose of animation by the great David Shrigley. But it does have
all those things. And the beautiful actors. And their beautiful
accents. Cash back!
Hallam Foe (Bell) is a creepy teenager who wears a skinned badger
pelt over his head (which does nothing to spoil his immaculate bangs,
it should be noted), paints his face and torso, hangs out in a tree
house, and spies on people with binoculars. If those people are having
sex, he’s not above swooping down from his leafy bough on a zip wire to
terrorize them. He does these things because he misses his dead mother,
who drowned in the lake behind the stately home he lives in with his
stately father (Hinds, perfect as always) and Verity (!!!), his much
younger superfox of a stepmother (Forlani). He obsessively believes
that Verity murdered his mom and made it look like suicide. This does
not stop him from desiring her sexually, which makes for a complicated
home life. So much so that Hallam eventually bolts for Edinburgh, where
he falls in love—via peeping—with the HR lady at his work
(Myles). It doesn’t hurt that she looks exactly like his dead
mother.
Despite/because of the Oedipal curlicues, Foe is
fundamentally a song of innocence and experience. Writer/director David
Mackenzie—whose Young Adam was a brutal downer about
amorality—mines Hallam’s eccentricities not just for oddball
comedy but for outré sweetness (Bell’s infinitely endearing face
helps a lot), which creates a gently, but deeply, moral atmosphere.
There are consequences for Hallam’s refusal to grow up, but he
discovers them on his own. The film never punishes him for discovering
that his freakier tendencies are simply who he is. 
