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The Five Devils

194 votes

8-year-old Vicky has a mysterious gift: she can recreate any scent she comes across, even that of her beloved mother Joanne. When her estranged aunt Julia suddenly returns to town, the invocation of her fragrance plunges the young girl back in time to unravel a past replete with family secrets.

Status: Released

Released Date: 2022-08-31

Runtime: 96 mins

Director: Léa Mysius

Spoken language: Español, Français, English

Genres: Drama, Fantasy, Romance

Original title: The Five Devils

Production Companies: F Comme Film, Le Pacte, Wild Bunch, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma, Trois Brigands Productions

Production Countries: France

Cast

Adèle Exarchopoulos

Sally Dramé

Swala Emati

Moustapha Mbengue

Daphné Patakia

Patrick Bouchitey

Hugo Dillon

Antonia Buresi

La serveuse en rollers

Noée Abita

La petite fille blonde

Charlotte Bon Bornier

L'entraîneur de gym

Alain Guillot

La directrice de l'école

Stéphanie Lhorset

La chanteuse du karaoké

Inès Helouin

Le DJ du karaoké

Merwan Rim

Reviews

badelf

Léa Mysius has created a fascinating study here in The Five Devils. It reminds me a lot of Kubrick's horror, The Shining. Both films revolve around a protagonist that is a child gifted with the "Shining", the gift of "seeing" what others do not. The common thread is that the gift is really a metaphor for how much adults underestimate what a child sees, hears, and understands. Mysius uses magic surrealism as the vehicle for her exposition. It's quite charming and exciting. It's very well done and worth the accolades, even though I felt the script had just a few faults that took me away from complete enjoyment.

2024-08-15

Geronimo1967

"Vicky" (Sally Dramé) lives with her school swimming coach mother "Joanne" (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and fireman father "Jimmy" (Moustapha Mbengue). Despite a fair degree of quite nasty teasing from her schoolmates, she is a happy enough child who has an astonishing gift. She has the most acute sense of smell. She can differentiate between natural and man-made scents - she can even sniff her mother out in the woods, at a distance, amongst all the other fragrances. The appearance of her aunt "Julia" (Swala Emati) causes upset though. She has just been released from prison and her arrival at their home seems to unleash in the young girl an enhanced set of powers that allows her to see into the past, as if she were a bystander, and slowly a story of lust, love and violence is revealed. It's an intriguing premiss, but somehow it just never really stays focussed long enough to become interesting. Some of the characters - especially the young Dramé are engaging enough, but the story itself is weak and underwhelming. It's not that it is boring, it isn't: it's that for too long nothing happens and then when something does, it is usually seen through the eyes of a child far too innocent to fully appreciate (I hope) what she is witness too. There is plenty of sexual fluidity here, and even a bit of tragedy at the end, but for the most part it's a jigsaw puzzle of a film with too many pieces that either don't fit or don't matter. It kills one hundred minutes easily enough, but I doubt I will ever watch it again.

2023-04-01

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