“Our Father, the Devil” centers on Marie (Babetida Sadjo), a Guinean refugee in southern France who possesses the kind of thick armor forged by intense hurt. When a figure from Marie’s past life arrives in the guise of a priest at the upscale retirement home where she works as the head chef, something in her cracks.
In the assured hands of the writer-director Ellie Foumbi, Marie’s unraveling yields not only an absorbing psychological thriller, but a profound meditation on the ethics of immigration.
Marie’s story begins on a high note. Her culinary mentor, Jeanne (Martine Amisse), has written Marie into her will, giving Marie an idyllic mountainside cottage. Yet Foumbi’s stark, formalist tableaux captures even the glittering French countryside as a space trembling with contained anxiety.
Inexplicably, at least at first, Marie fends off the advances of a handsome bartender to whom she is evidently attracted. Sadjo, in a commanding performance, shifts easily from pure venom…
