‘Our Father, the Devil’ Review: Wash Away Your Sins

“Our Father, the Devil” facilities on Marie (Babetida Sadjo), a Guinean refugee in southern France who possesses the form of thick armor cast by intense damage. When a determine from Marie’s previous life arrives within the guise of a priest on the upscale retirement residence the place she works as the top chef, one thing in her cracks.

In the assured palms of the writer-director Ellie Foumbi, Marie’s unraveling yields not solely an absorbing psychological thriller, however a profound meditation on the ethics of immigration.

Marie’s story begins on a excessive be aware. Her culinary mentor, Jeanne (Martine Amisse), has written Marie into her will, giving Marie an idyllic mountainside cottage. Yet Foumbi’s stark, formalist tableaux captures even the glittering French countryside as an area trembling with contained anxiousness.

Inexplicably, not less than at first, Marie fends off the advances of a good-looking bartender to whom she is evidently attracted. Sadjo, in a commanding efficiency, shifts simply from pure venom to bashful uncertainty — as if Marie had been consistently taking part in psychological tug of struggle with herself and her previous.

Then, Father Patrick seems (Souléymane Sy Savané) — although Marie is aware of him higher as “Sogo,” a warlord liable for the demise of her household in Guinea. Marie reacts instinctively and imprisons Patrick in her cottage outpost, after which unleashes an inside brutality.

The first a part of the movie depends on the anomaly of whether or not or not Marie is mistaken about Patrick’s identification, however the reply isn’t easy. Instead, Foumbi’s script provokes questions on our capability for change and the absolution of previous sins — all anchored to the charged political query of an immigrant’s price. Painfully, and on the threat of shedding her new life, Marie discovers that there is no such thing as a such factor as devils — or angels, for that matter.

Our Father, the Devil
Not rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters.