Les Cinq Diables

"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.

According to Wikipedia, part of the filming took place in Isère (France), in the commune Le Bourg-d'Oisans and at Lac Bleu, as well as in Île-de-France. I couldn´t figure out why this movie is called The Five Devils. I read somewhere else that the name of the film relates to the five mountains nearby the place the action takes place. I do not think the landscape plays an important role in the film and, definitely has nothing to do with the story being told. Perhaps a more suitable title would be The Scent of Things, considering 'scent' is a strong issue throughout the whole film, which attracts our attention but does not contribute much for clarifying the development of the plot per se. If I have not read a short description given in Mubi about the story, the whole movie would have been even more confusing to me. Vicky´s father, Jimmy, had not seen his sister Julia for 10 years. From what I remember, Vicky and Julia had not met before, up to the day Julia arrives at the family (Joanne, Jimmy and Vicky) house and the story starts.

Without assistance, teaching, learning you've acquired, certain skills that take you back to times expired, with your jars of concoction, your magic causes a motion, that can take you back to places you desire. What you find, seems to defy, cause and effect, and the paradox is a mystery and detracts, as your appearance would affect, all the outcomes you'd expect, chicken, egg, just takes you to a disconnect. So you scratch your head, your chin and raise your brows, as you determine all the why's and where's and how's, all the acting is quite fine, Adele is always so divine, but there are better ways to engage and arouse.

It's definitely a drama/mystery. There are odd things that happen surrounding the daughter, Vicky, that you aren't suppose understand from the beginning, but will be clear once you reach the end. The story is confusing, because it's meant to be, because the characters have a intense history that you don't know. It's kind of like the sixth sense where you aren't meant to understand everything the 1st time you watch it, but with the sixth sense, you didn't really know you didn't understand everything until the end. I think the problem some people have with this film is, confusing things happen surrounding Vicky, and even at the end, they don't actually have a person say IN WORDS, what's the deal with Vicky, you just have to figure it out, but it's not that hard when you think over every thing you saw. Imagine watching the sixth sense, but they never specifically referenced ghosts, and the kid never said "i see dead people", but all the evidence of him seeing dead people was there.

As a premise, it has a mix of elements that called my attention. The trailer shows interesting imagery and characters and the movie lives up to it.

Through the first half I was very curious about what the characters do and how events would develop.

There acting performances are solid throughout, and even if I heard some mixed opinions about the story being all over the place, too much going on and confusing, for me the elements were always clear and the story is quite simple to understand.

There's a little twist at the end that might leave you thinking to figure out what it means, but even if you don't, the story makes perfect sense and it even surprised me with its tone.

The cinematography is ok, nothing special, but the story is interesting and well paced so it kept me entertained from beginning to end.