Foe review: Saoirse Ronan is gimlet-eyed in her realism. Paul Mescal is stratospherically anguished

You can just about see what drew Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal, Ireland’s most popular young actors, to this deeply puzzlingly, intermittently engaging science-fiction fable from the director of Lion.

Based on a novel by Iain Reid, Foe concerns a couple isolated in a remote farmhouse as the world engages with ecological devastation. Both get to simmer. Both get tortured speeches. For most of its duration Foe plays out like a theatre piece.

That is not just to do with the small cast – it’s essentially a 2½-hander – and the enclosed location. The film revels in the sort of grand coups that work better on stage. This household item gets symbolically smashed up. This individual arrives unexpectedly to unsettle the equilibrium.

Ronan (gimlet-eyed in her realism) and Mescal (stratospherically anguished) relish the opportunity to show off their chops and make connections that may be better exploited in future projects, but the action fails to escape the strictures of allegory and metaphor.

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The high concept is easily outlined. Junior (Mescal) and Hen (Ronan) are visited by a faintly sinister official named Terrance (Aaron Pierre), who explains that the former has been selected to serve on an orbiting space station. Before that happens Terrance will spend time probing Junior in the family home. That research concerns the authority’s decision to leave Hen with a biological clone of her husband who shares all his memories. Well, that doesn’t sound as if it could cause any trouble. Right?

The high concept is easily outlined. Junior (Mescal) and Hen (Ronan) are visited by a faintly sinister official named Terrance (Aaron Pierre), who explains that the former has been selected to serve on an orbiting space station. Before that happens Terrance will spend time probing Junior in the family home. That research concerns the authority’s decision to leave Hen with a biological clone of her husband who shares all his memories. Well, that doesn’t sound as if it could cause any trouble. Right?

There is no question that Foe abounds with ideas. Shot in a corner of Australia that convincingly stands in for a blasted American west – the paintings of Andrew Wyeth look to be an influence – the film is saying something about the secrets all couples keep from each other. It will come as no surprise that we get to consider how artificial intelligence may eventually become indistinguishable from the real thing.

For all the cast’s best efforts, however, Foe never seems more than a theoretical exercise, a sketch for an uncompleted project. One can’t help but think of the recent sci-fi romp The Creator. That epic was not half so serious in its consideration of the artificial-intelligence dilemma, but you couldn’t reasonably claim it failed to make a film of itself.

[ Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal, together at last! They’ve collided, anyhow ]

Foe is in cinemas from Friday, October 20th