Julia Kowalski’s second feature-length film, Her Will Be Done, and her previous effort, the short film I Saw the Face of the Devil (which two years ago also premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight), are two sides of the same coin. Both embrace Kowalski’s dual culture (she was born in France from Polish parents) and feature the young actress Maria Wróbel, who gives here a performance which is both cold and visceral, terrific and terrifying. The two films explore the notion of possession, and how individuals and society react to the belief it exists – whether it does or not – from different sides. In I Saw the Face of the Devil, set in Poland, a teenager thought she was possessed because she felt homosexual desire, and turned to religion for help; what unfolds in Her Will Be Done is a tale of two women, the first falsely accused of being a witch by the same people who refuse to see the second as such, while she indeed is one.

Half of the characters in the film are members of a Polish family who came to a small French town to work on a farm; we do not know where exactly, a means for Kowalski to express the fact that the animosity and the violence occurring there can, and does, happen everywhere. Among them, the daughter Nawojka (Wróbel) has paranormal abilities, which are known to her kin and are revealed to the audience early on in the film. She is able to master them to a certain extent but they manifest mostly when she loses control, for instance while she sleeps or pleasures herself. Which she has the urge to do once she has set her eyes on Sandra, feeling lust at first sight for her. Portrayed by Roxane Mesquida, Sandra is the opposite of Nawojka in every way: the daughter of the French owners of the farm, as extroverted as Nawojka is reserved – yet as wrecked by her own family as Nawojka is protected by hers – Sandra comes back home after several years, following a traumatic assault she suffered.

Hence, past their differences, deep down both female characters share a common situation: strangers where they live, they are aggressively pursued by men who at the same time fear them because of a connection (real or imaginary) to witchcraft. What those men are truly afraid of is that these women are complex, multidimensional characters – they want to pigeonhole them to one way of being, whereas Kowalski does the exact opposite in how she writes and films them. She fully embraces all the layers of their personalities, their mysteries, never trying to tame these aspects but on the contrary letting them push the story into uncharted territory. This is true from the outset of the film, which has minimal exposition but rather makes us discover and understand the characters’ nature and relationships bit by bit, as they influence the course of events.

This approach to storytelling becomes even more significant, and powerful, when Her Will Be Done reaches its long and hypnotic core, massively and powerfully relying on symbols. A festive wedding day on the farm turns into the following night, pitch-black except for an ominous red glow crafted by cinematographer Simon Beaufils (who worked on I Saw the Face of the Devil, as well as Anatomy of a Fall and Saturn Bowling, another tale of evil lurking just under the surface of things). In this darkness, a strong mix of alcohol, firearms and sexual desire taps into the animal nature of all the men and women involved, turning them into hunters and prey – with the roles switching from one to the other. Kowalski leaves us no time to catch our breath after this nightmare, as another one is immediately ready to start: the dreadful response from the losing (male) side, once they have regrouped and decide to take revenge. With still one foot firmly in the witchcraft horror genre, giving birth to staggering gruesome visions, the film adds to it a cautionary tale which proves equally strong (and avoids being too heavy-handed as well), about the heinous resentment of men when they feel their absolute dominant position is threatened. The conclusion might fall a bit flat in comparison, but this singular take, at once razor sharp and metaphoric, on male violence and female insecurity rings particularly true as gender conflicts are once again on the rise.