In a remote province situated at the foothills of a mountainous range in France, a young school-going girl gets busy brewing concoctions to entrap the scents of her family members in an attempt to get closer to unravelling their life stories.
Léa Mysius’ second film, sprinkled with elements of magical realism, narrates the role the senses play in preserving and relaying memories.
Joanne Soler (Adèle Exarchopoulos) is a swimming instructor at the local pool and a mother to Vicky (Sally Dramé). Married to Jimmy (Moustapha Mbengue), she lives a mundane life minutes away from her aging father who is diligent in offering her marital advice to ‘repair’ her marriage.
The Five Devils (French)
Her daughter Vicky experiences bullying for being the only interracial kid at her school. However, she is relentless in her pursuit of trying to understand the world she inhabits by putting her heightened sense of smell and hearing to work. Her life is disturbed when her aunt Julia (Swala Emati), an alleged pyromaniac, visits the family after a stint in prison. With the help of a scent in her aunt’s bottle, Vicky is transported to a time before her birth and gets a chance to witness her mother’s queer relationship. Overwhelmed by the knowledge, Vicky ponders over her relationship with her mother which conveys a profound sense of existentialism to the audience.
While the film begins with a promising premise, the sentiments are muddied with overindulgence in the supernatural; the director immerses the audience in Vicky’s potions and dilutes a well-constructed plot. The exploration of existentialism from the eyes of a young girl is fascinating but the narrative tool of time travel using the sense of smell is not executed in a convincing manner. Her ambition to tackle sexism, homophobia, racism, and small-town provincialism overpowers the narration and makes it shallow.
Adele is inviting and charismatic on the 35 mm film as Joanne while Moustapha Mbengue is impactful in his silence — watching his character accept and resign to the agency of women in his life is refreshing. However, it is Sally Dramé who steals the show; she is potent in constructing and holding the air of mystery around for the entire movie. With the help of the subtle production design, Léa gives the town with icy cold lakes an unforgiving, cruel character.
At its core, The Five Devils or Les Cinq Diables is a tale of young queer dreams that falter at the cusp of adulthood. The sequence of Joanne and her queer partner on a stage singing along to Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart while looking into each other’s eyes mends the unfulfilled ambitions of the film.
The Five Devils is currently streaming on MUBI
