A young woman dreams of escaping the stultifying claustrophobia of her drab and squalid family farm, while she wrestles with what may be an inescapable curse, in this intense French arthouse flick, the second feature from writer-director Julia Kowalski.
Set in a dank and fetid environment of mud and muck, the tenor of Her Will Be Done (original title Que ma volonté soit faite) is about as far from a bucolic idyll as it’s possible to get. The muted colour palette and sharp cinematographic eye evoke the sense of a rank Gallic hinterland, a place where creature comforts are as rare as life opportunities.
In a culture in which boorish, bullying men hold sway, Nawojka hopes that training for a vet’s qualification could be her passport to freedom. But her father and siblings are determined to limit her horizons to a life of agricultural drudgery, fearful that she might have inherited the vulnerability to Satanic possession that doomed her mother. When a long absent neighbour returns, the free-spirited and passionate Sandra, Nawojka is drawn to a role model who seems both exciting and supremely self-confident, just as the farm’s livestock is struck with an inexplicable disease.
Kowalski and Simon Beaufils’s script sets in motion multiple story threads, but the pair choose to leave most of them unexplored – or, at least, unexplained – opting instead to focus on exploring the dysfunctional dynamics of a community subsisting in seemingly timeless isolation. The strand of folk horror in Her Will Be Done centres on Nawojka’s efforts to tackle the dark forces that surface in her psyche, and to purge herself of their contagion. The accusation that she is “possessed” can be read as a metaphor, as well as something paranormal. While she acts out the symptoms of possession, perhaps she – like her mother – is condemned as an emissary of evil simply because she wants something more for her life than her kith and kin will allow?
Maria Wróbel gives a thoroughly committed performance in the lead role, capturing Nawojka’s journey from quietly seething resentment to explosive self-discovery. Not everyone who defies the crushing, oppressive culture of this farmland will find a similar means of escape.
Her Will Be Done offers a repellant vista of cruelty and narrowness, and a vision of the deep countryside that is the antithesis of picture postcard perfection. Nawojka’s ultimate vindication brings some overdue light into what would otherwise be a relentlessly grim evocation of a pastoral life shorn of any sense of warmth or hope.
HER WILL BE DONE had its theatrical premiere in New York on September 24th , and launches on VOD platforms in the US on 2nd October
