Burn Witch, Burn: Kowalski Nurses a Curse in Sinister Backwoods
For her sophomore feature Her Will Be Done (Que ma volonté soit faite), Julia Kowalski channels Stephen King’s Carrie, bringing to mind the infamous crescendo, “And then the world exploded.” In essence, a genre slanted, coming out narrative about a downtrodden young woman trapped under her father’s thumb, it’s an anxiety laden narrative building swiftly to spikes of violence, often from surprising instigators. Moody, sometimes overtly sullen as it hurtles towards an inevitable, anticipated finale, Kowalski prizes agony and discomfort over cathartic bloodletting, creating a grimy, backwoods vibe where no one’s hands are clean.
Nawokja (Maria Wróbel) works on her father’s farm, caring for him and her brothers. She yearns to attend a local veterinary school, but even though she’s twenty, her father has no intention of allowing her freedom. It appears Nawokja and her extended family believe she suffers from the same curse which thwarted her dead mother, involving deep trance-like states and spells of self harm. With her elder brother Bogdan’s (Przemyslaw Przestrzelski) impending marriage to a local sweetheart, the fate of the family farm is in danger with the cows exhibiting symptoms of a strange, unclassified disease. Suddenly, Sandra (Roxane Mesquida), a town pariah, reappears to sell her family home, a property right next to the farm. The villagers make no attempt to hide their dislike for Sandra, whose sordid history with another local man ruined her reputation. However, Nawokja is drawn to the beautiful newcomer, eventually to her own detriment.
If Carrie comes to mind, so does Joachim Trier’s “Thelma,” (2017), another contemporary tale about a teen girl whose sexuality unleashes uncontrollable telekinetic powers. Despite these more lavish, ultimately ambiguous elements staged by Kowalski, Her Will Be Done more closely resembles the toxic sisterhood of Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen, recently adapted by William Oldroyd. Maria Wróbel even slightly resembles Thomasin McKenzie, while Roxana Mesquida is the sultry femme fatale a la Anne Hathaway, except more of a frazzled white trash composite with fading flamingo colored hair and a leg brace which recalls Rosanna Arquette’s mangled body in Cronenberg’s “Crash,” (1996). Warm leatherette echoes course through one of the film’s most transfixing moments when a drunken car chase collapses the slaughter of deer and sexual assault, as if we landed somewhere in a Bruno Dumont/Jean-Charles Hue land of inherent terror in the French countryside (an energy assisted by the casting of Guiraudie alums Raphaël Thiéry and Jean-Baptiste Durand).
Decay and putrefaction seem to have blighted the land from the opening frames, the cows on Nawokja’s farm oozing unsightly substances requiring them to be put down, not unlike the more social realist minded drama “Bloody Milk,” (2017). The film’s dramatic catalyst sealing everyone’s fate transpires at Bogdan’s wedding when the uninvited Sandra shows up to share in the celebration, upsetting the revelry like a fairy tale sorceress (or the titular entity of Marcin Wrona’s “Demon,” 2015). Nawojka’s own attraction to Sandra, thwarted after she saves her from a gang rape, plays a hand in a catastrophic unraveling, leading to a shocking sacrificial victim rivaling the fate of the horses in “Equus,” (1977). An unsettling and vibrant score from Daniel Kowalski greatly enhances the ambience of dread, which culminates in an entire village exempting themselves from redemption. Whatever Nawokja’s will might be, the satisfaction of it eludes her.
Reviewed on May 16th at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival (78th edition) – Directors’ Fortnight. 95 Mins.
★★★½/☆☆☆☆☆
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