The Five Devils
Léa Mysius's second feature reveals both great direction and great acting in a romantic fantasy set in Alpine France.
In this second feature by Léa Mysius, Vicky Soler (Sally Dramé) is an eight-year-old biracial girl living in an Alpine community with her mother Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and her father Jimmy (Mustapha Mbenigue). She is an instructress at the local swimming pool and he works as a fireman and a visitor to their home might well conclude that this is a very contented family (after all there is a wall of photographs described as recording ten years of love and happiness). Nevertheless, the return of Jimmy's sister, Julia (Swala Emati), after a whole decade away leads to tensions which will reveal just how unsettled the couple really are. It also leads to young Vicky discovering much about the past history of her parents including the cause of the fire at the pool in which Joanne’s close friend Nadine (Daphné Patakia) had been badly scarred.
Stories in which what has happened earlier gradually merge to give a very different view of a present situation are far from unfamiliar, but if well done they can still be telling. In the case of The Five Devils there is much that is very effective indeed. To start with, there is the quality of the acting. The best-known player is Adèle Exarchopoulos from Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013) and she is again excellent here but equally the other leading adult actors are impressive too. As for young Sally Dramé whose role as Vicky is such a central one, this child actress is appealing without ever in any way being cute and that makes her casting ideal. The look of the film is splendid too with the colour photography by Paul Guilhaume (who also shares the screenplay credit with Mysius) making the most of the Alpine setting. As for Mysius herself, her direction here is wonderfully fluid. Indeed, her technique is such that one can say that this is filmmaking of the very highest standard. So secure is her grip on the film that she can even at one point unrealistically impose a soundtrack song on a dramatic episode and make us relish it. As it happens, the scene in question is rather unconvincing dramatically speaking, but she holds the sequence together through the sheer panache of the way in which the song ‘It Should Have Been Me’ is fitted to the shots edited by Marie Loustalot to create a real sense of unity.
With so much going for it, it may seem odd that The Five Devils has not been more widely acclaimed. The reason lies in the way in which Mysius has chosen to approach her story through what can be called a supernatural layer. The potential clash of styles that results from mixing a tale of complex personal relationships (one that could readily have been shown naturalistically) with this fantastical element is one that I would have expected to dislike. That in the event I resisted it much less than I had expected is a further credit to Mysius, but it still fails to work to the full. It helps that Mysius adroitly leads us in step-by-step encouraging the viewer to accept her concept. The first step is to establish early on that Vicky has a quite exceptional sense of smell and keeps labelled bottles linked to individual smells be they animals, plants or even people (several jars relate to her mother). These smells – and not least those connected to Julia – can render her unconscious in such a way that the child finds herself briefly transported into the past. Odd as the idea is, Mysius illustrates it clearly and only then goes on to reveal what else is involved: the fact that it is Julia – and Julia alone – who can see Vicky when she exists in the past and witnesses events relating to the family. We then realise that Julia’s troubled history is directly linked to the then unborn Vicky - that’s because she repeatedly saw the child who was invisible to others thus leading to accusations of her being mentally disturbed which in turn led to her taking to alcohol.
What might have seemed too ridiculous for the viewer to accept earns that acceptance through the adroitness of its presentation. Nevertheless, the two sides of the piece never match up fully. If we accept the time travel theme, we are nevertheless left wondering why Julia on seeing the eight-year-old Vicky for the first time doesn't react with shock for she would surely recognise in her the apparition that had changed her life. Furthermore, when the final shot in the film adds an extra twist to this theme it underlines even more the oddity of the film’s concept. In contrast to all that, the portrayal of the main characters convinces and involves us and, as in the recent Joyland, one finds that the film gains from having sympathy for virtually everyone (if there is a villain here it is undoubtedly the subsidiary of figure of Joanne’s father played by Patrick Bouchitey).
The Five Devils is certainly a strange work and that even applies to the choice of title. Although it might initially seem to link somehow with the song which is heard behind the opening credit titles (that’s ‘Me and the Devil’), we later discover that ‘Les Cinq Diables’ is actually the name of the swimming pool which features in the story! But, if there is a lot to question here, there is also much to praise: uneven though it is, The Five Devils is evidence enough that Léa Mysius is a special talent, albeit an erratic one.
Original title: Les cinq diables.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Adèle Exarchopoulos, Sally Dramé, Swala Emati, Moustapha Mbengue, Daphné Patakia, Patrick Bouchitey, Hugo Dillon, Antonia Buresi, Noée Abita, Alain Guillot, Stéphanie Lhorset.
Dir Léa Mysius, Pro Jean-Louis Livi and Fany Yvonnet, Screenplay Léa Mysius and Paul Guilhaume, Ph Paul Guilhaume, Art Dir Esther Mysius, Ed Marie Loustalot, Music Florencia Di Concilio, Costumes Rachele Radoult.
F Comme Film/Trois Brigands Productions/Le Pacte/Wild Bunch International/Auvergne Rhône-Alpes Cinéma-Mubi.
96 mins. France. 2021. UK Rel: 24 March 2023. Cert. 15.
