Review: ‘The Five Devils,’ starring Adèle Exarchopoulos

May 1, 2023

by Carla Hay

Sally Dramé, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Moustapha Mbengue in “The Five Devils” (Photo courtesy of MUBI)

“The Five Devils”

Directed by Léa Mysius

French with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Grenoble, France, the sci-fi drama film “The Five Devils” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A swimming instructor, who used to be a gymnast, has her life upended when her 8-year-old daughter finds out family secrets after a troubled relative comes to visit.

Culture Audience: “The Five Devils” will appeal primarily to people who like watching artsy and offbeat European films that have elements of science fiction.

Swala Emati and Adèle Exarchopoulos in “The Five Devils” (Photo courtesy of MUBI)

“The Five Devils” is a science-fiction mindbender that presents its story as pieces of a puzzle that eventually emerge to reveal the whole picture of a family that has been plagued by secrets and scandals that they don’t want to discuss. This time-travel drama is intriguing but a little repetitive and predictable. The cast members give interesting performances that strengthen the uneven script. Some viewers will be offended by how the movie glorifies a selfish and unfaithful character. However, there’s enough in the story to hold the interest of viewers who are curious to see what is revealed next.

Directed by Léa Mysius (who co-wrote “The Five Devils” screenplay with Paul Guilhaume), “The Five Devils” had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. The movie is set in Grenoble, France. Like a lot of time-traveling movies, “The Five Devils” has a plot that makes people think about how life experiences could be shaped by choices versus fate.

“The Devils” begins by showing a group of horrified women in their 20s, who are dressed in sparkly leotards and standing in front of a burning building. The women are screaming in fear and horror. Most of the women have their backs to the camera, but one of these young women can clearly be seen. And she looks like she’s in complete shock.

Her name is Joanne (played by Adèle Exarchopoulos), and viewers find out that this fire happened about 10 years before, when she was part of a group of gymnastic dancers called the Five Devils. The movie circles back to this scene later in “The Five Devils,” in order to explain the circumstances under which this fire happened. Without giving away spoiler information, it’s enough to say that this fire had a profound impact on many people’s lives.

In the approximately 10 years since that fire happened, Joanne has gotten married to (ironically) a firefighter named Jimmy Soler (played by Moustapha Mbengue), who is an immigrant from Senegal. Joanne, who quit being a gymnast ever since the fire, now works as a swimming exercise instructor at a community center, where most of her students are middle-aged and elderly women.

Jimmy and Joanne have one child together: a precocious 8-year-old daughter named Vicky (played by Sally Dramé, making an impressive feature-film debut), who sometimes helps Joanne do breath-holding practices at a nearby lake. In these practice sessions, Vicky is supposed to time Joanne on how long Joanne can stay underwater. Vicky is very perceptive and has more than above-average intelligence. Vicky also has the ability to travel in the past.

Vicky doesn’t find out that she has this time-traveling ability until after her family gets a surprise visit from Jimmy’s younger sister Julia (played by Swala Emati), who works in nano-biotechnology. Julia’s presence seems to immediately disturb Joanne. Jimmy is happy to see Julia, but Joanne is standoffish and abrupt to Julia. Privately, Joanne comments to Jimmy about Julia:” I want her to leave. I can’t stand it.”

Julia meets Vicky for the first time during this visit. Vicky has an acute sense of smell, and she tells Julia that Julia smells like peat whiskey. There are other signs that Julia abuses alcohol. When Julia arrives for the visit, her left eye is bruised. Julia says she got the bruise because she accidentally fell down while drunk. It later emerges that Julia has other issues that have to do with her mental health. She has spent a certain number of years in a certain facility. The details are eventually revealed in the movie.

Vicky is a loner who likes to collect insects. Joanne knows that Vicky has an unusually strong sense of smell, but Joanne doesn’t want to tell Jimmy about it because she thinks Jimmy will want to put Vicky in therapy. Joanne doesn’t think that Vicky needs therapy. Joanne wants to be a mother who can handle everything herself.

At school, some of the students bully Vicky for having big, natural hair. These school bullies (there are about five to seven of them) taunt and attack Vicky. Because of the way Vicky’s hair looks, the school bullies call her Toilet Brush or Butt Brush. If Vicky fights back in self-defense, the bullies try to put the blame on her.

During a disturbing incident at school, the bullies surround Vicky and force soap into her mouth. But then something bizarre happens during the attack: All the kids pass out at the same time, including Vicky. School officials and parents find out, and people try to blame Vicky. However, Joanne adamantly defends Vicky and says that the kids who were bullying Vicky are to blame and should be the one to make an apology. That apology never happens, and people never find out why all of the children lost consciousness at the same time.

Meanwhile, Vicky has other episodes of passing out randomly. And every time she passes out, she goes back in the past and sees parts of Joanne’s life. In the present day, Vicky has made a liquid concoction in a jar that includes some of her own urine. (Yes, this movie is weird like that.) Vicky puts the concoction underneath the bed where Julia is sleeping.

Vicky finds out that every time she inhales this concoction, she can control when she goes into her mother Joanne’s past. Vicky is invisible to people she sees in the past, except for one person who apparently has the same psychic abilities as Vicky does. The rest of “The Five Devils” shows how Vicky finds out some family secrets that the adults in her family don’t want her to know.

The secrets involve betrayals, infidelity and lies to cover up people’s true identities. One character in particular is the catalyst for most of the chaos because this person does the most deceiving and hurting of other people. However, the movie goes out of its way to try to make this character look sympathetic, when that sympathy is not deserved in most cases. This narcissistic person, who likes to play the victim when causing problems, doesn’t like to take much responsibility for causing so much emotional damage.

Some of the movie’s supporting characters have varying degrees of knowledge or ignorance about these family secrets. Joanne’s widowed father (played Patrick Bouchitey), who doesn’t have a name in the movie, suspects one of these secrets, but he doesn’t want to really know the truth. Jimmy has a co-worker friend name Jeff (played by Hugo Dillon), who warns Jimmy that Julia’s presence is upsetting to some people in the community. Joanne has a co-worker friend named Nadine (played by Daphne Patakia), who used to be in the same gymnastics group and whose face was disfigured in the fire. Nadine has a secret that is related to the Soler family’s big secrets.

All of the cast members play their parts well, but the movie would not be as fascinating without the riveting performance of Dramé as Vicky. It is through Vicky’s eyes that viewers discover all the family secrets. Dramé is able to convey with great skill the myriad of emotions that Vicky feels, including the hurt and confusion when she finds out that a big part of the family’s life turned out to be a lie that was actively covered up by the adult in the family who causes the most emotional chaos. Vicky also finds out something that makes her question if she would have been born in the first place if certain people had made different decisions.

Vicky’s loss of childhood innocence has more emotional weight than the soap opera-ish melodrama caused by the adults in the story. “The Five Devils” loses its way a little when it leans too heavily into an over-the-top “life or death” situation toward the end of the film. And the person who was hurt by infidelity doesn’t give the type of reaction that some viewers might expect. “The Five Devils” tries to show how life can be messy, but the ending of the movie succumbs to a conventional formula that tries to ignore the big mess caused by the most toxic person in the family.

MUBI released “The Five Devils” on March 24 in New York City, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on March 31, 2023.

Review: ‘Mandibles,’ starring Grégoire Ludig and David Marsais, Adèle Exarchopoulos, India Hair, Roméo Elvis, Coralie Russier and Bruno Lochet

August 1, 2021

by Carla Hay

David Marsais and Grégoire Ludig in “Mandibles” (Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing)

“Mandibles”

Directed by Quentin Dupieux

French with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in unnamed locations in France, the comedy film “Mandibles” features an all-white cast of characters (with one black person) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Two dimwitted best friends, who unexpectedly come into the possession of a giant fly, plan to train the fly to steal things for them, but they encounter some obstacles and distractions along the way.

Culture Audience: “Mandibles” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching offbeat European movies about strange people in bizarre situations.

A scene from “Mandibles” (Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing)

What would you do if you found a fly that’s the size of a medium-sized dog inside of a car trunk? if you’re dimwitted best friends Manu (played by Grégoire Ludig) and Jean-Gab (played David Marsais), you immediately decide you’re going to train the fly to steal things for you, so the fly can be like a drone at your command. Do things go as planned? Of course not, because there would be no “Mandibles” movie if they did.

“Mandibles,” written and directed by Quentin Dupieux, is another one of his absurdist comedies with oddball characters in France who commit crimes in their quest for some kind of greatness. In the case of Manu, who is homeless and living on a beach because he’s been evicted from his most recent residence, his immediate goal is to make €500. An acquaintance of Manu’s named Raimondo (played by Raphaël Quenard) has told Manu that he’ll get the money if he transports a suitcase to someone named Michel Michel (played by Philippe Dusseau), on one condition: Manu cannot open the suitcase.

It all sounds very suspicious, but Manu needs the money, so he accepts the offer. Manu steals a car to complete the task. The car radio is missing, but he’ll soon find out that’s not the most unusual thing about the car. Manu drives to Jean-Gab’s house to enlist his help and have some company to drop off this mysterious suitcase. Jean-Gab is the more sensible, less impulsive friend of this duo, but that’s not saying much because both have a habit of making stupid decisions.

On the way to Michel Michel’s place, Manu and Jean-Gab hear thumping noises in the car trunk. They open the trunk to see a giant fly that’s about the size of a medium-sized dog. At first, the two pals are freaked out by the sight of this fly, which shows signs that it has above-average intelligence. But Jean-Gab quickly comes up with a scheme to train the fly to rob banks for them and commit other thefts, such as stealing food. They find ways to keep the fly in captivity, such as duct taping it to furniture, using a makeshift leash or wrapping it in a blanket.

What follows is a strange and cheekily comedic misadventure where Manu, Jean-Gab and the fly end up taking a few detours on the way to delivering the suitcase to Michel Michel. “Mandibles” has the usual array of memorably eccentric characters that Dupieux puts in his films. However, what’s disappointing about “Mandibles” is that the fly isn’t in the movie as much as viewers might think it is, based on how heavily this movie’s marketing materials make the fly look like it’s the centerpiece of the story.

Manu and Jean-Gab actually spend most of the story trying to hide the fly. The majority of the movie is about the people whom Manu and Jean-Gab encounter along the way and the weird predicaments that these two moronic friends create for themselves. Some of these scenes work better than others.

For example, soon after discovering the fly, Manu and Jean-Gab drive to a remote area to train the fly, which Jean-Gab eventually names Dominique. They see a camper in this area and decide it would be the perfect place to sleep for a few days during this training. (The task to deliver the suitcase becomes less of a priority.) However, an elderly man named Gilles (played by Bruno Lochet) lives in the camper, and he’s not about to give up his residence so easily to these intruders.

Manu and Jean-Gab then find themselves invited to an upscale home by a woman who’s close to their age named Cécile (played by India Hair), who sees them by chance when they’re driving on the same road together. Cécile is convinced that Manu is someone named Frédéric Breton, who was a classmate she dated briefly when they were in high school together. When Manu sees that he and Jean-Gab will get to stay and party in this nice house that has a swimming pool, they do nothing to correct this mistaken identity.

Cécile lives in the house with her sister Agnès (played by Adèle Exarchopoulos) and their brother Serge (played by Roméo Elvis), while Cécile’s friend Sandrine (played by Coralie Russier) is visiting. Lots of alcohol drinking ensues, and Serge makes a pass at Sandrine, which she rejects. Agnès has brain damage from a skiing accident, so she talks too loudly and sometimes says inappropriate things.

The way the Agnès character is put in the movie can initially come across as mean-spirited to disabled people because Agnès seems to be the butt of the jokes. However, it soon becomes obvious that Agnès is the smartest person in the house. She’s the first to suspect that Manu isn’t the person whom Cécile thinks he is.

Agnès also figures out quickly that Manu and Jean-Gab have secretly brought an animal with them, but at first she thinks it’s a dog. When she finds out the truth, it’s one of the funniest scenes in the movie. (And it’s not spoiler information because it’s in the movie’s trailer.)

None of the movie’s characters has much depth because Dupieux’s films are about poking fun at ridiculous situations rather than giving characters complex personalities or fascinating backstories. And because Manu and Jean-Gab are written as simple-minded buffoons, the actors portraying them don’t have to show much emotional range. “Mandibles” is like an artsier French version of “Dumb and Dumber,” but with a giant fly.

Luckily, Dupieux seems to know that his movie characters can be insufferable if they wear out their welcome on screen. Therefore, “Mandibles” is only 77 minutes long. It’s not Dupieux’s best work, but there are enough laughs and head-shaking moments to make “Mandibles” an entertaining jaunt into weirdosville.

Magnet Releasing released “Mandibles” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on July 23, 2021.

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