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Summary Vicky (Sally Dramé), a strange and solitary little girl, has a magical gift: she can reproduce any scent she likes, and collects them in a series of carefully labelled jars. She has secretly captured the scent of Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulos), her mother for whom she nurtures a wild, excessive love. When her father’s sister Julia (Swala E...
Directed By: Léa Mysius
Written By: Paul Guilhaume, Léa Mysius
The Five Devils
68
7.2
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Summary Vicky (Sally Dramé), a strange and solitary little girl, has a magical gift: she can reproduce any scent she likes, and collects them in a series of carefully labelled jars. She has secretly captured the scent of Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulos), her mother for whom she nurtures a wild, excessive love. When her father’s sister Julia (Swala E...
Directed By: Léa Mysius
Written By: Paul Guilhaume, Léa Mysius
Where to Watch
Coming Soon
Not available in your country?
ExpressVPN
Get 3 Extra months free
$6.67/mth
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 19 Critic Reviews
68
68% Positive
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
32% Mixed
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 19 Critic Reviews
68
68% Positive
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
32% Mixed
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Léa Mysius’s accomplished second feature is the time-travelling, olfactory-driven LGBTQ romance and family melodrama you couldn’t possibly have seen coming.
The Five Devils feels like the inevitable encounter of indestructible drives, which send sparks flying both when they are satisfied and when they are denied.
For all its structural ingenuity, The Five Devils is fundamentally a love story, and a surprisingly affecting one, largely due to a captivating central performance from Exarchopoulos, who, a decade after becoming the youngest ever winner of the Palme d’Or (for Blue is the Warmest Colour), gives a performance of such nuance and sophistication, the rest of the adult cast struggles to keep up.
By David Hughes
FULL REVIEW
In the end, there’s insufficient emotional pay-off or psychological insight here to justify the credibility-defying tricks and narrative convolutions. But the kid is adorable and Exarchopoulos, as the hot and cold Joanne, is believable at every moment, in a film more attuned to mood and sensation than literal meaning.
French writer/director Léa Mysius concocts a compelling witch’s brew with The Five Devils, but the result doesn’t quite come together with the potency she’d desired.
Buoyed by two outstanding performances – from Adèle Exarchopoulos and first-time child actress Sally Dramé – and shot in ravishing 35mm, The Five Devils is a finely-crafted drama-genre hybrid, let down only by the fact that the story is a lot less interesting than the themes it carries.
Somehow it doesn’t all come together, delivering neither the stab of actual fear nor the satisfaction of real, plausible psychological insight.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 6 User Ratings
7.2
83% Positive
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
17% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 6 User Ratings
7.2
83% Positive
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
17% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
O filme certamente tem personagens marcantes, numa família inter-racial cuja filha tem dons olfativos bem superiores à média, e estabelece um grande vínculo afetivo com a mãe, sendo a mãe a única personagem branca daquele microuniverso.
A partir daí o roteiro vai sendo construído de forma muito competente, perpassando por vários caminhos, do trabalho do pai que se vê como bombeiro em um país europeu ao bullying sofrido pela garota da escola. Aqui os episódios, embora quase gratuitos, vão servindo para traçarmos as personalidades de cada um.
Mas nada comparável à cena cotidiana entre mãe e a filha, quando a mãe resolve nadar em um lago gelado, com a filha passando no corpo da mãe algum creme para lhe proteger do frio e ainda cronometra o tempo em que ela pode ficar exposta à água gelada, assoprando o apito ao cabo do período. Uma espécie de ritual entre as duas.
A rotina daquela família, que já era marcada por dores étnicas e geracionais, é abalada quando a tia da garota, Júlia, é posta à solta nas ruas, vinda da prisão. Sem ter para onde ir, ela se junta aos quatro.
A meu ver foi aí que o filme desandou. Tornou-se não-linear, abusou de inexplicações e mistérios, e ainda inseriu certo conteúdo fantasioso. O resultado é um filme que perdeu a conexão com o público, não que a experiência tenha ficado ruim, mas a meu ver perdeu-se algo que tava indo muito bem.
Embora, claro, sem tais opções o filme poderia ser taxado de mais do mesmo, acho que, se fosse optar por tal abordagem mais implícita, ao menos o conteúdo segurasse a onda. Ainda bem que as interpretações estão fantásticas, e a diretora sabe muito bem conduzir seu filme, mantendo o interesse ainda assim.
Se a ideia do filme era realmente deixar perguntas, então foi bem sucedido. É um filme de camadas. Ao final, uma quinta pessoa aparece: seria essa pessoa a alusão ao quinto diabo? Não sabemos.
Também não sabemos exatamente o dom da filha, que vai além do olfato aguçado e seu potencial para explorar tempos e lugares. Para quem curte filmes de quebra-cabeça é um prato cheio. Ficou bem feito, e isso que importa, para além do gosto subjetivo de seu público.
Report
Adèle Exarchopoulos once again leaves a fine impression, this time as a young mother disturbed by how the past has once again knocked on her door. The family drama is very well intertwined with a dash of magical realism that stands out thanks to an original supernatural element, which gives a unique attribute to one of the characters. Unfortunately, the story runs out of steam in the second half; the character of Swala Emati, intimately connected with that of Exarchopoulos, lacks a convincing development, leaving only a few traces of her motivations. Similarly, another of the secondary characters (also connected to the protagonist) only wanders through the plot. Either way, Exarchopoulos' presence, some unexpected but impressive visual resources, and commitment to something new make this film a very worthy effort.
Report
Production Company
- F Comme Film
- Trois Brigands Productions
- Le Pacte
- Wild Bunch International
- Auvergne Rhône-Alpes Cinéma
- Canal+
- Ciné+
- Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
- Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC)
- La Région Île-de-France
- Cofinova 17
- SofiTVCiné 8
- Cinéventure 6
- Agence Nationale de Gestion des Oeuvres Audiovisuelles (ANGOA)
Release Date Mar 24, 2023
Duration 1 h 43 m
Awards
Philadelphia Film Festival
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Cannes Film Festival
• 2 Nominations
Bergen International Film Festival
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination