The French/Polish director Julia Kowalski recently premiered her Que Ma Volonté Soit Faite (Her Will Be Done). It is a Quinzaine Des Cineastes selection and the director’s sophomore full-length feature, Crache Cœur (Raging Rose). The film narrates the story of Nawojka (Maria Wróbel), a girl from rural France whose parents are Polish immigrants. Naw, which is her family nickname, has a curse. She inherited it from her mother, who had already passed away. In her daily life, Naw helps her family with cattle rearing and performing domestic tasks. She dreams of going to vet school. Naw has to take care of her father, Henryk (Wojciech Skibiński), and her brothers, Bogdan (Kuba Dyniewicz) and Tomek (Przemysław Przestrzelski). Everything changes when her mysterious neighbor Sandra (Roxane Mesquida) returns home to sell her late parents’ house. Her free spirit and desire to escape her village spread to Naw, who gets attracted to Sandra and the idea of leaving home.
In Her Will Be Done, the director constructs a modern folky horror about the blooming of a young female. The hereditary aspect of an unknown curse in the story relates to witchcraft narratives and tales. In this sense, Kowalski uses a 16mm cinematography work by Simon Beaufils to construct a bleak and eerie atmosphere surrounding that village. Mud, blood, unspecified secretion, and fire provide a dirty aesthetic to the visual composition. Still, it suffers from dark lighting that prevents the audience from admiring the frame and understanding the directorial intent in those sequences. Promptly, the graphical symbolisms create a suspense in the reasoning behind the grotesque attitudes by Naw, such as cutting live animals to take their hearts and setting wood on fire. The ambiguity in her behavior aggregates to the confusion in the metaphor of growing old and occupying a different body that is not your own.
Another crucial subtext to the film is her sexuality as a motivation to accept the curse’s interference in her self-control. Naw, has moments of letting the supernatural possess her, which is also a way to connect with her dead mother. Still, she is a curious young woman exploiting her sexual desires and the natural premise to explore pleasure. Hence, Sandra is both an inspiration to the woman she wants to become, free and understanding of herself, and an unexplained passion. Naw is not sure of her attraction towards her neighbour, still, she is willing to explore it during her euphoria.
The discourse proposed by Kowalski is the ambiguity of sexuality in youth. It incorporates the body metaphor of the witch-like transformation, which the curse ignites in her. The duality of Naw and her bonding with Sandra through her problems and doubts is probably the most fascinating sub-plot present in the film. However, it is not fully developed, and Sandra is solely a ladder to the growth of Naw as a main character. Indeed, a frustrating choice by the director, once the chemistry between Roxane Mesquida and Maria Wróbel provides a credible connection between those women from the same place. Sandra is the mentor of Naw, but also someone she is sexually attracted to. In their first direct conversation, the local girl sees Sandra burning objects and sees her naked body. It is a scene that constructs the interaction between them and also the attraction of Naw to her. Unfortunately, it is not an explored sub-plot, and lacks depth to create a more sophisticated subtext.
The analogy and horror construction of a witch awakening falls short in the third act when Kowalski aims for an explosive conclusion. The village is sure of Sandra’s guilt in Naw’s disappearance, due to her being blooming, and the witch hunt goes for the wrong target. Maria Wróbel delivers a marvelous performance as a girl in the last step of fully developing into a woman. However, the heavy-handed score by Daniel Kowalski forces the audience to feel scared and tense for an imagery that does not present such feelings. Visually, the director leans toward the darkness and the fire elements to emulate a chilling atmosphere, and create the cathartic moment of a complete transformation by Naw. Finally, the shy and quiet girl is becoming a force of nature, a trait she inherits from her mother. Still, the encenation and mise-en-scéne are not creative enough to extract the genre elements to expand the visual force to the screen. The climax is not as impactful as it tries to be, as it lacks coherent construction of that action and visual sense.
Ultimately, Que Ma Volonté Soit Faite features fascinating ideas and an impressive performance by Maria Wróbel. Yet, it gets lost in the darkness of the woods, and its true force never emerges on the screen.
Her Will Be Done (Que Ma Volonté Soit Faite) recently screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the Cannes site for the title.
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