Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Léa Mysius
Starring: Adèle Exarchopoulos, Sally Dramé, Swala Emati, Moustapha Mbengue, Daphné Patakia
French director Léa Mysius made an impressive feature debut in
2017 with her coming-of-age tale
Ava. Her followup, The Five Devils, similarly offers a young female protagonist in nine-year-old Vicky
(first-timer Sally Dramé), but while
The Five Devils might be described as a coming-of-age
tale, it's also something of a supernatural thriller.
Vicky has a special gift, an exaggerated sense of smell that allows her
to discern scents that she hasn't even come into contact with before. In
a scene that reminded me of the best moment of M. Night Shyamalan's
Unbreakable – when Bruce Willis's son keeps adding weights
to his father's lifting bar to prove his supernatural abilities –
Vicky's mother, swimming pool attendant Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulos) tries to hide from her daughter in a forest, but is easily tracked
down by her aroma.
Vicky is so obsessed with scents that she keeps mementos from important
people in her life in labelled jars, which she occasionally inhales like
a glue-sniffer seeking a quick high. When Vicky's aunt, Julia (Swala Emati), arrives to stay, Vicky immediately captures her scent, but finds it
so overwhelming that it knocks her out cold. While unconscious, Vicky
appears to regress back in time 10 years and watches from afar as Julia
and Joanne embark on a lesbian affair.
Things are spiced up when it's revealed that Julia can see Vicky,
making the young girl's trips more akin to time-travel than simply
visions. Julia arrives back in town an unwanted figure, having committed
some sort of act 10 years ago for which she was legally cleared but
socially unforgiven. Joanne is particularly uncomfortable having her old
lover around, but soon her old feelings resurface. Her husband, Jimmy
(Moustapha Mbengue, Senegal's Brad Pitt), is in an awkward
position, aware of the threat his sister poses to his marriage but
unable to turn her away.
What plays out is something of a reversal of the
Shadow of a Doubt template, where a charismatic relative
arrives and charms the family, only for their young niece to grow
suspicious. Here everyone is already suspicious of Julia, and it's only
Vicky, through her visions, that begins to see the truth and her own
role in her aunt's downfall. Time-travel movies always have that moment
where the time-traveller does something to dramatically change the
course of reality, and that's the case here, with Julia driven mad by
her visions of Vicky, who always manages to disappear before anyone else
can catch a glimpse of her.
The narrative doesn't come together as satisfyingly as you might like,
and the time-travel aspect is really just a way to enliven flashbacks,
but Mysius and her romantic partner Paul Guilhaume (co-writer and
cinematographer) keep us invested with some beautiful visuals that
capture the frostiness of the Alpine region. A stunning lake that will
kill you if you spend more than 40 minutes in its icy waters seems like
a metaphor for Joanne's concealed feelings for Julie. The striking
opening image of a teenage Joanne and several other girls clad in
gymnast's leotards as a fire rages behind them gives us a hint to the
reasons behind Julie's ostracisation, keeping us on edge as we're nudged
toward that moment through Vicky's trips back in time. Other subplots –
the racially loaded bullying of Vicky by classmates, Jimmy's affair with
a work colleague (Daphné Patakia) of Joanne – are half-baked and
add little to the overall narrative. Like the mountainous area of its
setting, The Five Devils is roughly hewn, but it possesses
a dark beauty that's easy to get lost in.
