The Five Dev­ils – first-look review

The past lives of par­ents are hav­ing a moment on screen. In both the art­house world, with the likes of Céline Sciamma’s del­i­cate Petite Maman, and the main­stream sphere, with Dis­ney and Pixar’s delight­ful Turn­ing Red, under­stand­ing who our guardians were before we exist­ed seems to have become a favoured nar­ra­tive. In Director’s Fort­night offer­ing The Five Dev­ils, direc­tor Lea Mysius fol­lows suit, craft­ing an intrigu­ing yet over­stuffed tale of fam­i­ly mys­tery and fantasy.

The Sol­er fam­i­ly live a rel­a­tive­ly qui­et life in their iso­lat­ed moun­tain vil­lage. Joanne, played by a bril­liant Adèle Exar­chopou­los, is a for­mer gym­nast who now works at a leisure cen­tre. Her mar­riage to fire­man Jim­my (Moustapha Mbengue) is strained and they have grown dis­tant over the years; Joanne drifts through her days with lit­tle to relieve the numb­ness she seems to feel about her life. It’s iron­ic, then, that her attempt at self-care involves wild swim­ming in freez­ing cold water where her heart could stop if she were to stay longer than twen­ty minutes.

The film’s enig­mat­ic genre turn revolves around their young daugh­ter, Vicky (Sal­ly Dramé), and her unnerv­ing­ly good sense of smell. She stores scents in jars for future ref­er­ence – notably her mother’s, which lingers on the grease she uses to keep warm in the water – and can sniff out even the sub­tlest of odours. The racist bul­ly­ing Vicky faces at school leaves her lone­ly and soli­tary, seek­ing com­fort in her par­ents alone.

But the arrival of Jimmy’s sis­ter Julia (Swala Emati), who has been mys­te­ri­ous­ly absent for a decade, caus­es a rup­ture for Vicky. Her par­ents seem dif­fer­ent, tenser at Julia’s arrival, and she will soon dis­cov­er her own hid­den con­nec­tion to her aunt that may have set tragedy in motion well before she was even born.

Mysius’ film is so filled with com­plex ideas that it feels like the cen­tral nar­ra­tive strands could have been split into total­ly sep­a­rate projects – one fol­low­ing the thorny roman­tic his­to­ry between Joan­na and Julia before the for­mer mar­ried the latter’s broth­er, and anoth­er div­ing fur­ther into the puz­zle of Vicky’s pow­ers. The com­bi­na­tion of the two here results in a mud­dled nar­ra­tive that feels stilt­ed in pac­ing, clunky in editing.

When Vicky dis­cov­ers that a cer­tain smell will plunge her into the past, where only Julia can see her, she begins to unrav­el the secrets that plague their fam­i­ly and the wider com­mu­ni­ty. The notion that scents can be trans­portive, that scent-mem­o­ry is incred­i­bly pow­er­ful, has clear emo­tion­al res­o­nance but there is a sub­tle­ty miss­ing to weave these nar­ra­tives togeth­er ele­gant­ly. From Vicky’s per­spec­tive in the past, the detail and sen­ti­ment need­ed to real­ly devel­op Julia and Joanne’s bond, to give weight to Julia’s fears, and to give the film’s cli­max greater depth is real­ly lacking.

Still, the filmmaker’s ambi­tion and flair for the strange (as also seen in her bold debut fea­ture Ava) is admirable and gives The Five Dev­ils an eeri­ly curi­ous qual­i­ty. There are moments of visu­al adven­tur­ous­ness, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing a kalei­do­scop­ic karaōke scene, and the orig­i­nal music by Flo­ren­cia Di Con­cilio cre­ates a strik­ing atmos­phere and tone. Yet, over­all, the clash­ing ideas leave this feel­ing a lit­tle too heavy-hand­ed and uncon­trolled to be total­ly immersive.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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