Elias BovardPremiering at this year’s Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, writer and director Julia Kowalski’s Her Will Be Done (French: Que ma volonté soit faite) tells the story of Naw (Maria Wrobel), a young Polish woman living with her nice, protective father and two shitty, hostile brothers on a farm in rural France. Naw also lives in the shadow of her late mother. An opening scene suggests her mom was the victim of a demonic posession. I am not sure why the English translation of the title changes ma (“my”) to “her”, but it seems a meaningful choice given the story of escaping one’s fate.
Roxane Mesquida plays the other most intriguing character in the film, Sandra, a neighbour returned to deal with the house she’s inherited. The town treats her like an outcast but Naw and Sandra may have found allies in each other. Both Wrobel and Mesquida bring a palpable pain to their performances. In Mesquida’s case, she literally walks around with a knee brace. They circle each other like wounded animals. Or the way Naw tends to the sick cattle on the farm. There’s a lot of interesting potential in their relationship, but like a lot of the movie, very good elements do not quite fall into place coherently.
Wrobel and Mesquida give some very strong performances though. Wrobel has an innocence straddling childhood and adulthood, as though she is at times still trapped at the age she was when she lost her mom. And she does well in several difficult scenes reminiscent of Sissy Spacek in Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976). Mesquida brings the tough exterior of someone who has been hurt many times before. The two of them are the most memorable part of the film. Maybe the other characters suffer here, lacking a backstory or complexity, but it is not always necessary to humanise bad people. Sometimes they are just bad. But some more time on the familial relationships and her dead mom might have helped the story have more impact.
The film gains some energy midway through thanks to some nuptuals. I love a long, drunken wedding scene chugging along as a centrepiece (Deer Hunter for example) and this movie delivers a good one where the water is vodka. The fun and threat of free flowing alcohol works as effectively as a distillation of the sudden, mostly male, violence Naw and Sandra are surrounded by. It resonates with the hysterical powder keg seen at the start of the movie.
Despite being a horror film, the violence inflicted on Naw and Sandra feels all too real, escalating to scarier and scarier places until Naw breaks completely. Wrobel carries the film’s climax with fearless vulnerability and intensity. The story beats were not always clear to me but Kowalski managed to create a vivid visual imprint like a haunting memory. This is made all the more powerful thanks to Wrobel’s highly sympathetic performance.
The film has so many strengths and still something felt missing. The movie looks good, capturing the wet and always muddy terrain. Naw’s life on the farm feels real and difficult. The scenes with the mysteriously sick cows are convincingly off putting, and connect later to the physicality that closes the film. Everything from the score down is well executed. There are a lot of great bones in the movie but it did not feel like it completely added up to a satisfying whole for me while watching. The climax is intense and arresting but I’m not sure how much of that is thanks to anything that came before it in the film. Yet thinking about the film now it seems to be growing on me more and more.
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