There’s a genuine transgressive streak in “Her Will Be Done” that counts for a lot in Julia Kowalski’s unnerving if occasionally unwieldy second feature. It starts out in a fire and you could argue it never leaves when the teenage Nawojka (Maria Wróbel) continues to burn with the fury of a thousand suns as she stalks around her family farm, dismissed by her father to handle the cooking as he and her brothers Bogdan and Tomek get their hands dirty with the livestock. Someone needs to be in the kitchen when the family’s matriarch has passed, but Nawojka hardly sees why that needs to be her when she’s just as capable as Bogdan and Tomek around the cattle and ironically, as much as her dad sees her as a practical replacement for taking over his late wife’s domestic duties, he fears Naw taking after her when she eventually was driven to insanity.
The backstory can be as murky in its presentation as the mud on the family’s well-trodden property, as the fiery opening is accompanied by a curt bit of narration from Naw, acknowledging “[evil] is within me” having been passed down from her mom and only a few quick cut montages sprinkled throughout the film to speak to their past, which is only addressed with vague allusions when it’s probably too upsetting to discuss more openly. Nonetheless, Kowalski forges a psychic grip with Naw between the character and the viewer that is difficult to break as she opens one up between Naw and her mom upon the arrival of Sandra (Roxane Mesquida), the daughter of the family’s neighbors across the street. Returning home to collect her family’s things only to feed them to a fire, Sandra is eager to destroy any history she has of this godforsaken place where the persistent whispers in the small town about more recently mishandling an abusive ex she probably rightly interprets as an antipathy in general towards women who dare to stand up for themselves, and considered a bad influence on Nawojka, she makes an unwelcome appearance at Tomek’s wedding where all hell breaks out by the end of the night, leading the two women to leave with two men who certainly wouldn’t seem to have their best interests at heart.
“Her Will Be Done” considers the worst event imaginable to be potentially the best for Nawojka, who is jolted into embracing the darkness inside of her. In narrative terms, it’s difficult not to compare to “Carrie” – and a suggestion that Naw has telekinetic powers at one point as she communes with cows that are dying left and right doesn’t discourage this — but it would seem to have more in common with the director’s Polish compatriot, “Posession” director Andrzej Żuławski in favoring a vibe over any story in general, fitfully engaging with a tale of a farmgirl who comes to see her hometown for how small it actually is, but more invested in capturing the free-floating cultural rot that leads to madness and any form it takes is legitimately unpredictable.
Much of “Her Will Be Done” is bluntly effective when character motivations are basic in a rural area where simple minds prevail and exchanges are presented as directly. But Kowalski successfully summons that strange, indescribable undercurrent that leads Nawojka to begin to behave in ways she doesn’t understand herself and the world bends to her warped view of it with some appropriately discomfiting editing choices and an insatiable desire to keep raising the stakes. Ironically, what’s familiar may end up giving audiences something to hold onto when “Her Will Be Done” goes further and further off the rails since the connection between Nawojka and her mother is addressed so cryptically yet it never gets old seeing a teen rebel against the only life they’ve ever known and while it remains an open question if Nawojka can get a fresh start, Kowalski breathes new life into the material.
“Her Will Be Done” does not yet have U.S. distribution.