The Five Devils 2022

6.929 / 10   156 vote(s)
NR
Drama Fantasy Romance

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.

Release Date 2022-08-31
Runtime 1h 36m
Directors Léa Mysius, Paul Guilhaume, Laura Caselli, Elodie Roy, Charlotte Caussarieu
Producers Jean-Louis Livi, Fanny Yvonnet, Guillaume Marien
Writers Paul Guilhaume, Léa Mysius, Léa Mysius, Paul Guilhaume

"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.

CinemaSerf