OUR FATHER, THE DEVIL - Mark Reviews Movies

Our Father, the Devil, Cineverse

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 24, 2023

The key to understanding the central character of Our Father, the Devil is that writer/director Ellie Foumbi's debut feature is as much about guilt as it is about revenge. Marie (Babetida Sadjo), an African refugee living in an anonymous town in France, isn't simply seeking vengeance for the terrible things that were done to her. She's also confronted by the memories of the awful things she had been compelled to do.

Can the death of one person, especially the man who did and compelled those atrocious acts, by her hands actually fix anything? It's a fascinating, tricky question and one that Foumbi's movie struggles to examine within the confines of this physically and psychologically confined thriller.

The story is at least fully invested in Marie, as her day-to-day struggles as the head chef at a retirement home, leaving her without much of life outside of work, initially take focus. To be clear, she's not entirely alone, since she gets along with her co-workers in the kitchen and has a good friend in Nadia (Jennifer Tchiakpe), a nurse at the same facility. She's even quite close to Jeanne (Martine Amisse), Marie's former culinary school instructor, who is now a resident and recommended her for the job.

Something, though, keeps Marie at a certain distance from these colleagues and her friends, as well as anyone else she might meet, especially a more-than-friendly bartender named Arnaud (Franck Saurel), who gradually makes his intentions regarding her as clear as possible. When the well-to-do Jeanne gives Marie the keys to a remote cabin in the mountains that the former teacher plans to bequeath to the student in her will, our protagonist seems more at home away from anyone and anything.

The reason becomes clear, even if Marie herself isn't forthcoming with the specific details of her past—what had been done to her and what she did when she was a child somewhere in Africa. How can she say what happened, and what good would any confession to the people around her now, who could only have an idea of the kind of horrors she experienced, do?

Some answer comes in the person of a new priest to the area, although that answer isn't in the form of unburdening her conscience to the man of the cloth. The priest is Fr. Patrick (Souleymane Sy Savané), whose face is obscured to Marie when she first encounters him, but the sound of his voice lures her toward him, preaching to residents and employees in the retirement community, with an unmistakable look of dread recognition on her face. When she finally does see Patrick, Marie collapses.

At first, the plot revolves around a single question: Is this man the same one who caused Marie so much pain, trauma, guilt? The official report is that the warlord who ran and indoctrinated Marie into a violent religious cult in her homeland is dead, but Marie cannot doubt what she sees and hears in this priest. Following a spontaneous act of violence against the man, Marie drags and drives him to that remote cabin, where she plans to get the truth out of him and make him pay for what he has done.

The question of Patrick's identity, as it turns out, is far more engaging and suspenseful than the answer we're given in a relatively short amount of time (Savané's performance is particularly nuanced, blending real charm and genuine vulnerability with the occasional hint that there's something deeper and far less innocent than what we see on the surface). With the tension of doubt and uncertainty out of the way, what is left for this story to mine?

That's the question Foumbi never quite resolves, as Marie essentially tries to live a double life—going about her regular schedule at work and keeping Nadia from figuring out why she doesn't spend as much time with her friend, while returning to the cabin at every possible opportunity to exact some sort of punishment against Patrick. From those episodes, we learn some extent of what Marie endured and survived as a child and teenager under the control of that warlord. With the character's new purpose made clear, though, it too often feels as if Foumbi is delaying the inevitable end of Marie's abduction of this man.

The point of doing so, of course, is to add some layer of suspense, as the police start looking into the priest's disappearance and Nadia becomes increasingly suspicious of her friend's absences. Mostly, though, it's to further show how removed Marie feels from other people, and while the clarification is appreciated, the strengths of both the opening section of the movie and Sadjo's internalized performance render most of those scenes redundant (The tone and method of one scene between Marie and the bartender feels completely out of place, but that's a different issue).

The real goal in the lengthy delay here seems to be to give the characters and situation enough time and space to arrive the final message of Our Father, the Devil. That has more to do with the underlying guilt Marie has felt for so long than a decisive act of revenge. However, it's difficult for Foumbi to make that point after spending so much time in the realm of vengeance, as well as with an increasing number of conveniences and contrivances that allow this scenario to go so far.

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