This review was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn’t exist.Some of the most flooring moments in cinema can come in what otherwise seems like a simple moment of discovery. Though often smaller in scale than the massive spectacle of many films, such moments can be made more explosive than anything out there because of how they take the minute details of a life and methodically mold it into something completely shattering. In writer-director Ellie Foumbi’s feature debut thriller Our Father, the Devil, previously the winner of the Audience Award Winner for Best Narrative at the Tribeca Film Festival and nominee for Best Picture at the 2023 Spirit Awards, discovery comes when a sermon is overheard at a retirement home in the tranquility of small-town France. The one doing the discovering is Head Chef Marie, a Guinean refugee whose life is about to be changed forever. Played to perfection by Babetida Sadjo, we see in her eyes the world beginning to crumble. Through her titanically good performance and the decisive vision of Foumbi, the film immerses us in the rubble that is Marie’s past and, increasingly, her present.

While the film is rich in meticulous details from its crushing central performance to the delicate way it is all captured, any writing about it requires withholding to preserve the experience. What can be said is that what Marie discovers is a man by the name of Father Patrick (Souleymane Sy Savané) who has come to offer religious guidance at the retirement home. The opening sermon he gives seems to almost cast a spell over the residents and her co-workers alike, making her petrified expression at hearing his words that much more painful. When she subsequently passes out, we know that something is very wrong indeed even if no one else around her will acknowledge it. As Father Patrick seems to continually interject himself into her work with Marie recoiling from him as if she were burned, the pain that is etched into her face soon gives way to steely determination. The film wastes no time in taking a plunge into something closer to horror while still keeping its head above water while Marie’s shifting emotional state stares us in the face as the truth begins to come into focus.

Babetida Sadjo Tears Through Every Frame of ‘Our Father, the Devil’
Image via Tribeca

As we then cycle through Marie’s work, her home, and her social life, the full portrait of her life is molded into being through Sadjo’s spellbinding performance. It is as if she and Foumbi are operating in complete synchronicity with each other. In the long list of great actor-director partnerships, this stands up there with the very best of them. Everything that Marie does, from the way she prepares a meal to beginning a relationship with a new lover, feels like it is bursting with emotion even in the smallest of gestures. The way Foumbi cuts between two scenes in one key sequence is a way that the violence she inflicts as an act of revenge is somewhat obscured while also making it that much more cutting. Through all of it, Sadjo just never misses a single step. Even just a single glance at someone delivering information or the way she smokes a cigarette carries with it a whole cascading of tension. This can be erotic tension in the case of her lover, a charming man who she seems to want to be with though also can’t open up to, as well as a more existential one in every other aspect of her life. No matter what the film demands of her, Sadjo is soul-shatteringly transcendent in capturing the particularities of the full scope of every person Marie is as she puts on a variety of masks depending on the situation and how honest she can be about all she carries with her.

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Even in the scenes with just her and Father Patrick, two people inextricably tied together, it feels as though entire worlds are contained in that room. The way one scene plays out almost entirely uninterrupted by cuts when Marie lays out what it was that happened at his hands is as breathtaking as it is brutal. There is an unflinching and frank nature to how this all gets expressed, at times feeling like key monologues from last year’s Saint Omer that would make for a great double bill with this to showcase two of the best debut narrative features of the decade. What separates them is how this is wrapped up in more overtly thriller elements which, while often less interesting as we are given brief reminders about the progression of an investigation, still make the emotional cuts of the rest of the film go that much deeper. It is less about what will happen than what has happened, making the story one that reflects on a past trauma that can never be undone in a far more measured way than most other modern stories manage to do. With every shot and conversation, we are given small slivers of hope that Marie will be able to find a way towards healing just as there is something tying her back at home that may also strangle the life out of any future she has. To explore this as confidently as both Sadjo and Foumbi do makes it a real gift of an experience even as it is unshakably grim depths we are taken to that the film excavates until there is nothing left.

‘Our Father, the Devil’ Leaves Nothing on the Table
Image via Cinverse and Fandor

The way this all comes together, with exuberant joys juxtaposed with the crashing down of an almost inevitable collapse, denies offering up any easy answers while still laying bare all of its scars. This is most felt when Marie confesses that she is “not built for this,” leaving pointedly unspoken what exactly she is referring to when asked in a manner that reveals more than if she had come out and verbalized it all. As we then hurtle towards an ending in which salvation can only be clawed back together from the thousands of pieces it has been shattered into, the reflection it holds up to its characters washes us away along with them in a culmination of emotional devastation so comprehensive all there is left to do is merely take it all in.

Rating: A-

The Big Picture

Our Father, the Devil is a shattering exploration of a life-changing discovery and the emotional turmoil it creates. Babetida Sadjo delivers a titanically good performance, capturing the complexities of Marie through her every gesture and expression, creating tension in even the smallest details. The film unflinchingly delves into Marie’s past trauma and explores the devastating consequences it has on her present.

Our Father, The Devil is out in theaters now in limited release.