“Her Will Be Done” (2025) is a French-Polish film about Nawojka or Naw (Maria Wróbel), who tends to the cows with her father, Henryk (Wojciech Skibinski), and brothers, Tomek (Przemyslaw Przestrzelski) and Bogdan (Kuba Dyniewicz). Occasionally the local veterinarian, Franck (Jean-Baptiste Durand) visits to care for the cows. When Sandra (Roxane Mesquida) arrives, Naw cannot take her eyes off of her. Oh, and Naw thinks that she takes after her mom, whom she believes had “the devil was inside her.” Is Naw just someone demonizing herself for naturally beginning to feel the strain of such a narrow and strict life, is it supernatural, or something else? Why choose? Director and scenario conceiver Julia Kowalski and collaborator Simon Beaufils make an unpredictable, riveting movie that may embed an old message, but still packs a wallop. For the sake of brevity, let’s classify Kowalski and Beaufils as cowriters.
In the opening act, if you find yourself subconsciously thinking of Naw as Cinderella, it makes sense. She does everything. Her age is never stated, but unlike her brothers, she does not socialize outside of the family and feels as if she must ask for permission to follow her dreams. Wróbel is perfect in the role because initially it is easy to dismiss Naw’s nocturnal fits and hysterical praying in front of the altar as another “The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel” with a young woman internalizing the lessons that everyone pelts her with. Without special effects or a big budget, Wróbel delivers an impressive performance that evokes more that money and technology cannot buy. Editor Isabelle Manquillet and Kowalski make the quotidian feel unsettling before the strangeness escalates, especially when Naw’s dreams start coming true. Also, there is that childhood opening sequence of her mother (Audrey Golay) standing in the middle of a fire. Something is going on with Naw but “Her Will Be Done” does not ever explain it. With all things Marvel Cinematic Universe in the ether, frame her predicament differently, and she could easily be a mutant experiencing the stress of sexual attraction. Initially she cannot take her eyes off of Franck, the only man whom she is not related to, and she sees frequently, then transfers her fixation to Sandra.
“Her Will Be Done” is great at ambiguity because it feels as if the cowriters have considered the entire history of the village and a complete biography for all the supporting characters even if it is never revealed. The dialogue and situation imply a lot but leave a lot to baffling interpretation, but only because it is hard to think of the thought processes of any of the characters except with a twisted, parochial mentality. It is one of those situations when you can say thank God that you do not understand them, because that means you are not a garbage person. Naw is not in a Carrie situation because Henryk clearly loves her and thinks that he is protecting her, but her brothers and anyone who visits their property treat her as if she is a servant. Also, Henryk can tell when Naw is powering up and keeps stopping her from reaching her full potential out of fear that the villagers will treat her like his wife and Naw’s mother, Helena.
When Sandra arrives, she offers an example of how Helena could have been the most normal woman in the world, but if people decided to scapegoat her, she did not stand a chance. The Sandra in everyone’s imagination is far more salacious and wicked than the real woman, who is only guilty of being born in the wrong place, wearing a miniskirt or clothes that others think is inappropriate, smoking cigarettes, or not just saying screw it and leaving before she finished her business in town. She wears a leg brace and bears scars that are unlikely to heal while Henryk limps and uses a cane thus implying disability makes people vulnerable and more understanding of differences. At one point, she wears a leather jacket with no shirt. When everyone is drinking, she joins in, but only because she is trying to appeal to someone who has power over her. She thinks that they are weird for drinking so much and treating it like water. She treats Naw like a person and may be the only vaguely normal person in the village. The longer that she stays in the village, the villagers treat her worse. There is a strange tension. No one wants her around, but they also do not want her to leave. Though alarmed, she does not seem too surprised at their behavior. “Her Will Be Done” shows how the women are just as vicious as the men in enforcing whatever weird standard that Sandra violated in their heads.
Sandra serves multiple functions. She is a foil to Naw as a person who escaped and lives on her own terms. She is a foil to Helena as an example of how a village can demonize a normal woman. She is another example of a scapegoat, and Naw’s possible future if she gets stuck, especially when the women join Franck and Badel (Raphaël Thiéry), the butcher, on a late-night ride in a pickup, which starts as fun and free, but turns unnecessarily cruel as Badel starts hunting a deer while driving. Men’s treatment of animals is a red flag of how they will treat anyone else. She is also a nurturing figure who begins to figure out that Naw is up to some weird shenanigans and instead of reacting negatively, responds with care.
“Her Will Be Done” sounds as if it is a horror movie, but it is billed as a drama so if you are disappointed at the understated and unsettling denouement for its lack of conventional resolution, that’s your bad. It is clear from the beginning what the desired outcome would be. French filmmakers are very into having a character die so another can have the life that they want. Christ figures, am I right? It did feel a smidge borrowed from “Game of Thrones.”
If “Her Will Be Done” could be criticized, it would have been nice to know why Henryck and Helena decided to immigrate from Poland to France, why Henryck thought that the villagers were “honest” people (flattery or comparative truth), and which practices were Polish and which were French. More films featuring multiple languages should use Chan-wook Park’s subtitle method of distinguishing different languages with different colors for each language. It is a modest list, and it is aligned with the writers’ creative choice of prioritizing ambiguity. The viewers just arrived in the middle of a story, so we must go with it.
If you go into “Her Will Be Done” with the right mindset, it will impress you in its simplicity, but if you are expecting a “Carrie” catharsis of revenge and bloody reprisals or any other horror tropes, keep it pushing. Kowalski’s film is autofiction since she and her family immigrated from Poland to France, which explains why the film is rooted in realism, but is also disturbing considering the events that occur in the story.
