A close relative of Celine Sciamma’s Petite Maman, The Five Devils (Les Cinq Diables in the original French) starts off with a one two three of scenarios which, if you’re coming to this movie cold (as I did) are designed to make you wonder just what you’ve signed on for – a horror movie, something at the luxe James Bond end of film-making, or even something much more ordinary, workaday, as those two opening impressions give way to a third.
An aquarobics class, run by Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulos) who, when not exhorting her “girls” (senior citizens) to give it some heft, spends her spare time wild-water swimming in a wintry alpine lake that’s just off frozen, watched over by her bright-button daughter, Vicky (Sally Dramé). At home relations with her Senegalese husband, Jimmy (Moustapha Mbengue) are barely warmer, though far less exhilarating.
Two things happen in quick succession: Joanne discovers that her daughter has a supernaturally acute sense of smell; and Jimmy’s sister Julia (Swala Emati) returns to the neighbourhood, seemingly to the discomfort of everyone.
Childhood as genre magic is the connection to Sciamma’s Petite Maman, with Vicky discovering that her strange affinity for smells can transport her temporarily back to the past, where she is able to eavesdrop on her mother’s life while at high school: the drinking, the parties, the passionate love, and the relationship with Julia that earned Vicky’s aunt the tag the “lesbian pyromaniac”.
One tiny wrinkle. In the past Vicky is invisible to all except Julia, who jumps like she’s walking on coals every time she glimpses her niece. How come? Never explained. But the title is Five Devils, so maybe there’s more than one person in this movie with strange paranormal powers.
It’s a powerful metaphor for children tasting of the fruit of knowledge – and learning that a parent is just another human being – but even more powerful is the way writer/director Léa Mysius handles it all, never letting the metaphor become overpowering, and keeping us solidly in the realm of the fantastical with a colour scheme that’s too heightened for the everyday and lighting that paints kitchens, high schools and municipal swimming pools as places of exotic discovery.
It looks great, in other words. The gorgeous high-end visuals announcing that a director has landed (this is Mysius’s second feature; I haven’t seen her first, 2017’s Ava), while an ironic grip on popular culture stop things getting too bogged down at the Louis Vuitton end of the market. Bonnie Tyler singing Total Eclipse of the Heart appears three times – come on! And at a key moment in the drama there’s a brilliant use of the weepie It Should Have Been Me, sung at full heartbreak by Yvonne Fair.
Anyone hoping that the words “lesbian” and Exarchopolous together again in a movie means a re-run of Blue Is the Warmest Colour, in which she did quite a lot of sexy grappling with Leá Seydoux (there is a constituency for it, it turns out) is going to be disappointed. See Mr Skin etc for the odd glimpse of side-boob. It isn’t, though she’s probably on screen more than anyone else, really her film.
That plaudit goes to Sally Dramé as Vicky, a kid called Toilet Brush or Cobweb Duster at school on account of her big African hair, and who carries the film’s twin track – the supernatural and the all-too-ordinary – in her big eyes and expressive features.
There is more to be said but why ruin the experience for someone who hasn’t seen The Five Devils. It can be watched as an almost-charming coming-of-age story, as a strange supernatural tale, or as a story of repressed love looking for a release, each perfectly realised. And while Mysius was working on this she was also writing the screenplay for Stars at Noon with Claire Denis. What did you do during lockdown?
The Five Devils – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
