The Five Devils

This aus­pi­cious and enig­mat­ic sec­ond fea­ture from French film­mak­er Léa Mysius unfurls like an ethe­re­al remix of Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing in its fan­ta­sy-flecked explo­ration of a pre-teen girl attempt­ing to com­pre­hend the roman­tic affil­i­a­tions of her par­ents. It’s per­haps not as cut-and-dried as that descrip­tion makes it sound, and there are few­er explo­sions of vio­lence. Pas­sion, yes; vio­lence, no.

The Five Dev­ils (a title refer­ring – curi­ous­ly – to a leisure cen­tre in the film) instead employs ellipses, flash­backs and time switch­es as mech­a­nisms to forge miss­ing pieces from a nar­ra­tive puz­zle which is, from the out­set, pur­pose­ful­ly mis­shapen. Vicky (Sal­ly Dramé) is the latch-key, bira­cial daugh­ter of Adèle Exar­chopou­los’ dour aquat­ic aer­o­bics instruc­tor Joanne and emo­tion­al­ly dis­tant fire-fight­er Jim­my (Moustapha Mbengue).

Both par­ents appear to be sleep­walk­ing through a mar­riage of incon­ve­nience, to the extent that you’re left to won­der if they may be play-act­ing their roles for Vicky’s sake. As an actor, Exar­chopou­los is preter­nat­u­ral­ly good show­ing you her inner feel­ings with the min­i­mum of crass emot­ing. The arrival of Jimmy’s estranged sis­ter Julia (Swala Emati) acts as the cat­a­lyst for all man­ner of furtive com­ings and goings, and the almost sur­re­al­ly stand-off­ish nature of the char­ac­ters pro­vides the film’s omi­nous ques­tion mark: what hap­pened in the past to make these peo­ple like they are?

Mysius, thank­ful­ly, opts for the road less trav­elled to trans­port us towards our answers, dis­pens­ing with all but cur­so­ry expo­si­tion and instead plac­ing young Vicky front-and-cen­tre to be our por­tal into the past. For it tran­spires that Vicky pos­sess­es supreme­ly height­ened olfac­to­ry skills, and spends much of her time squir­relled away with her col­lec­tion of mason jars while mak­ing potions. And this isn’t just some kids play stuff, she is repli­cat­ing the scents of those around her, and it’s sug­gest­ed that this spe­cial pow­er sends her into uncon­scious rever­ies where she finds her­self wit­ness­ing key inter­ac­tions involv­ing her par­ents in the past.

If that sounds like a wacky sci-fi sto­ry or ooky-kooky mag­i­cal real­ism, then it could be fur­ther from the truth, as Mysius frames this abil­i­ty as some­thing very banal and nat­ur­al. The director’s only styl­is­tic vice comes from the music, which con­sists of aton­al dirges (and a Class‑A Bon­nie Tyler nee­dle drop) – oth­er­wise, she makes you work hard to keep tabs on where and when you are, and whose per­spec­tive we’re see­ing things from.

Auda­cious as it is, The Five Dev­ils is a remark­ably sedate and omi­nous film which cap­tures the way that the worlds of adults and chil­dren har­mo­nious­ly orbit around one anoth­er while always remain­ing dis­tant, beau­ti­ful, unreachable.

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

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.