The Five Devils

I absolutely love when a movie manages to take me by surprise. When things start rolling, we’re part of the way through, and all I can think is “What in the world is going on?” Of course, there are good and bad examples of that. You’ve got to give me enough to be curious about. There needs to be some clear thought, some system, and it’s just that the movie isn’t explaining itself, so you’ll figure it out as you go. It’s all about dropping little bits of the puzzle at the right moment, as well as surrounding it with the right amount of interesting and compelling storytelling that stands on its own, which helps me care to figure it out. Otherwise, it’s more frustrating than enthralling.

The Five Devils begins with an image out of place. Of fire, of tears, of dancers, one of whom looks right at camera. This is implied to be the dream of 10-year-old Vicky (Sally Dramé in her acting debut, as far as I know), but will turn into the focal point of the film, something we learn well before the characters. Despite being largely told from Vicky’s perspective, the driving force of the movie is her mother, Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulos). She’s unhappy in her marriage to Jimmy (Moustapha Mbengue), but seemingly content to stay with it, if only for Vicky. Multiple elements of her life are destabilized when Jimmy’s estranged sister Julia (Swala Emati) comes to stay with them as she’s passing through town. If this sounds like a fairly straightforward drama with a strange opening, that’s because I need to emphasize one detail in its own paragraph.

Vicky is obsessed with smells. She collects them. Chestnuts, lotions, dead animals, all sorts of weird and disgusting things. She has jars of used grease worn by her mother on winter swims, helpfully labeled “Mom 1” through “Mom 3”. Unsurprisingly, she has an incredible, preternatural sense of smell. Intrigued by seeing her daughter sniffing pine cones before collection, Joanne plays a game to test Vicky’s sense of smell, and is disturbed by how precise it is. However, she never discovers Vicky’s biggest secret: what she uses the smells for.

We soon discover her olfactory abilities are not preternatural, they’re supernatural. She can mix just the right collection of smells together to transport herself back into a memory of someone else, walking amongst the world unseen like a ghost. And it’s this device which is used to fill the audience in on all the layers really at play when Julia shows up on Joanne and Jimmy’s doorstep on short notice.

From the very beginning, this is an intense experience. We can feel the swirling discomfort and unrest amongst these characters, yet we’ve no way to put our finger on it. There are hints of the past all around, but none of those images have any context until we start to experience them first hand through Vicky’s eyes. And through them, we very quickly understand Joanne’s over-the-top reaction to news of Julia’s visit.

At it’s core, this is a love story, not unlike Celine Song’s Past Lives from earlier this year. A married couple’s steady existence is disrupted by someone they have a history with showing up, causing everyone to question their place in each other’s lives. While the tension in Past Lives comes from the depth of their connection despite the solid marriage which keeps them apart, in The Five Devils it’s Joanne’s comfort in her discontent, her duty to her daughter, plus some unnamed event which initially changed the course of her life. Joanne is at war with herself, and as Vicky tries to understand this strange woman in her home, revealing more of her history with her mother, we begin to understand why Joanne has relegated Julia to her past even as they collide in the present.

The performances in this are super interesting, and add to the mysterious air. Just about everyone plays it pretty flat, and it works. Julia is a mysterious presence for much of the film, so Emati plays her as a bit of a blank slate, but with just enough character and slyness to know there’s something more going on there. Similarly, Mbengue projects so much sadness and resignation as Jimmy, despite being similarly reserved. And Dramé does an excellent job playing the quiet, dark, unsettling child, a force who feels simultaneously very natural and very unholy, like she’s about to unleash some evil on the world at any moment. The only one who gets to really emote is Exarchopoulos, which is a difficult task in itself here. She must play off of a bunch of others who (intentionally) aren’t matching her energy, and she does a phenomenal job. She swings wildly between emotional states in a way you’d expect from someone so conflicted, so in denial. And despite going so big, she never feels unhinged or unbelievable. All of this makes it feel like a small, reserved drama, despite featuring a witch child at the center.

The exception is during the flashbacks, everybody gets to be more expressive. It’s only ten years ago, so the same actors play their younger selves with different hair, clothes, and makeup, and it works perfectly, both to look their age to visually distinguish it from the present. You feel how much more at ease everyone is, which plays well since it’s implied these flashbacks are the key to this unspoken event which upset their lives. That event also accounts for how jaded and bitter everyone is in the present, making the contrast here that much more poignant.

The movie comes at you with an intense and unique atmosphere, one which never lets up for its 90ish minute runtime. This is only director Léa Mysius’s second feature film, and it absolutely makes me want to check out her first, Ava, from 2017. Turns out I recently caught her only acting credit when I watched Everybody Loves Jeanne, where she played a very small supporting role. Which is neither here nor there, but still, neat.

You’ll figure out where the story is heading well before the characters really clock it, and yet it manages to keep you on the edge of your seat, wanting to understand the twisty dynamics that lead there. To that end, it drags a bit, and the ending isn’t the most satisfying in certain ways as a result. But it doesn’t change how thrilling and fascinating it is up to that point, and how much it does to pull you into its world. I went in not knowing what to expect, as I remembered nothing of the trailer. But I came out with a new entry on my top ten for the year.