"Les cinq diables" or "The Five Devils" is a new French film, well actually one that premiered back in 2022 already, but it took until now, spring 2023, for the movie to make it to Germany, so it could even take way longer for countries further away and especially on other continents. The film has made some solid waves though awards-wise. Got in at the Césars, also at Cannes and Northern Europeans seemed to appreciate it especially and there is even some awards recognition from America. Some of the awards attention is difficult to appreciate though if it honors the film in a category that is exclusively for female filmmakers. Discrimination galore and I am sure Miss Alice Guy would not have appreciated either. She was good enough to compete with the man back then, but that is another story. Let's get back to this one here: As you can see from my rating, I do not really agree with any of it. I generally like French films, but this one here left me rather disappointed. It was not a failure or anything, but also not good enough for a positive recommendation, but before I get into the details of the plot, let's take a look at the basics first: It is not a long film, but stays under the 100-minute mark, still runs for over 1.5 hours. The director and co-writer here is Léa Mysius, who was born in 1989, so still a fairly young filmmaker, even if she had a break of five years between this film here and her previous work. Taking this gap into account as well, I really would have hoped this to turn out better. Anyway, her co-writer here is Paul Guilhaume and he already worked with Mysius on "Ava", the aforementioned 2017 film. Guilhaume is mostly a cinematographer though, very prolific in this department and in terms of writing he has done nothing except these two films with Mysius. We will see if he gets more prolific in this department in the future. Honestly, I am not looking too much forward to it judging from the outcome here, but there is always room for improvement I guess.
The title character in "Ava" was played by Noée Abita and she is also part of this new film here, but her role is so tiny in here, virtually no screen time at all, that I would rather call it a cameo than a supporting performance even. The star is of course lead actress Adèle Exarchopoulos and I am sure most people will still now her from "Blue Is the Warmest Colour", also known as "La vie d'Adèle", because of the successes this film had, but also because of the controversial conflict between the two lead actresses and the director. Let's not get into detail about this though. I would still say that film is worth mentioning here because honestly this feels almost like a bit of a sequel here and there. Exarchopoulos plays again a character who is not really happy with men, or at least her man and ends up in a romantic relationship with a woman. This is also packed with drama and conflict though as both, but especially the main character's love interest, are far from easy characters. The biggest issue I had with this film though was the fact that it played basically between two times and there were months or probably years in-between. Took me quite some time to understand this and even when I did, I was never really sure which time we are in right now. I am generally a fan of chronological movies, but here and there I am also okay if it is not chronological, but here it was just a mess and hurt the viewing experience a lot from my perspective. One crucial reason why I give it a thumbs-down. I am sure it all unfolded nicely and was so packed with metaphors and symbolisms in the writer's/writers' heads, but she/they did not manage to transition her/their ideas to the screen in a really convincing manner.
Here and there, I also felt the film was just too much trying to make an impact in terms of as many controversial and socially relevant subjects as it could. Take the lesbianism aspect, take the discrimination coming from the other kids and that is not even all. It's okay they included all this, but they did not manage to build a convincing story around it. The best example is the African woman's character being so scared because of visions of another girl. You could never be sure if she meant the protagonist's daughter or another. As a consequence, the oh so shocking and meaningful final shot felt just as pretentious and for the sake of it as the film's title. It is never explained in the film why it is like that. Same is true for the girl's talent to smell all kinds of things, even a coffee stain in a book or her mother far away. I mean this scene was nice, but in the overall picture quickly forgotten like the rest of it all and added not a lot. Or the scene when the girl fights back somehow when she is attacked and chokes or so by these other children. I am talking about the moment when they make her eat soap. This could have been another great addition story-wise, but all we understand is that something bad then happened as a consequence to at least one of the other kids. Maybe more. It was still funny to see the mother (and daughter) unleashing then on the other woman. Another scene I remember was the octopus scene. Now that was just harsh. Not so cool. The protagonist's father also stayed a bit in the mind with his words and actions here and there. I would say he almost felt like an antagonist with some of the stuff he says and does, not right from the very first scene where he still wants to help the young woman and proposes to take care of the girl, so she can spend some time alone with her man, but afterwards. The alcohol on the food thingey for the young girl was just one example.
Completely away from that, the film in general also makes decent use of Exarchopoulos's stunning physicality. There is no denying she is still a looker. You can debate if her acting talent is on par with her looks, but I think she did alright here with what she was given and the negative issues do not lie in her performance. As she plays a very gifted swimmer, we also see a great deal of naked skin from her here. Not a big surprise I assume. I will certainly not complain. If I understood correctly, she was a dancer before that. Maybe she is too old for that now or not at 100% physically anymore, so she switched to swimming? But still, her explanation about why you should only swim for half an hour or so in the cold water stayed in my mind. At least I learnt something here if the film did not wow me. I kinda felt Exarchopoulos had a pretty deep voice here. I am not sure if I remember this from her big breakthrough film, but I don't know. Her characters seem to like smoking and maybe the actress is not completely against it either. Another symbolism or whatever you wanna call it the idea of bruised eyes or faces. We see it on the colleague (she is the one played by the stunning Daphne Patakia no?) and we also see it on the African woman. You could have thought there that we will see more characters like this, but it did not happen. You do get a scene thought where Patakia's face is explained. Again a flashback and there is also some jealousy and cheating story attached to it. I am sure that eventually Exarchopoulos' protagonist does not care and maybe everybody is now really with whom they should be to find a bit of happiness. The protagonist's boyfriend or husband not sure also knew about what was going on between his sister and his girl and this surprised me a bit.
Much more than anything else, however, this film was all about stylistic choices. You will find some of the most memorable ones on the film poster too, like how we see the main character blurry and as if she had 4 twins or so, but it was all seen through the eyes of the girl then in this scene. Or glasses I should say maybe. This was the scene with the karaoke if I remember correctly, when the two girls sing a Bonnie Tyler song together that is featured on several occasions here. The song is better than the movie without a doubt, but it is slightly exaggerated in terms of how meaningful it wants to be too, so this it has in common with the film. The film ends with a pretty dramatic moment of poisoning that I found less memorable somehow than the depiction and explanation of how they kept the woman from freezing to death out there, so yeah the impact this film had on my was just not big enough for a thumbs-up here. You can skip this movie, even liking Exarchopoulos will not be enough to really make it worth it. I am glad it did not run for two hours. I would not blame the audience here if they do not really understand or find a connection with this movie, but rather the script. Sometimes less is more and of course you can guess a lot here like if maybe the young protagonist does not even exist, but then you will see that her mother agreed that she could so something in the swimming pool or that she defended her after the conflict with the other girls/parents etc. So yeah, I find it fairly difficult to make something out of all this. Clearly, there was so much ambition here to this film and you can easily see they wanted it to turn into something huge. But it is no such thing. Watch something else instead.
The title character in "Ava" was played by Noée Abita and she is also part of this new film here, but her role is so tiny in here, virtually no screen time at all, that I would rather call it a cameo than a supporting performance even. The star is of course lead actress Adèle Exarchopoulos and I am sure most people will still now her from "Blue Is the Warmest Colour", also known as "La vie d'Adèle", because of the successes this film had, but also because of the controversial conflict between the two lead actresses and the director. Let's not get into detail about this though. I would still say that film is worth mentioning here because honestly this feels almost like a bit of a sequel here and there. Exarchopoulos plays again a character who is not really happy with men, or at least her man and ends up in a romantic relationship with a woman. This is also packed with drama and conflict though as both, but especially the main character's love interest, are far from easy characters. The biggest issue I had with this film though was the fact that it played basically between two times and there were months or probably years in-between. Took me quite some time to understand this and even when I did, I was never really sure which time we are in right now. I am generally a fan of chronological movies, but here and there I am also okay if it is not chronological, but here it was just a mess and hurt the viewing experience a lot from my perspective. One crucial reason why I give it a thumbs-down. I am sure it all unfolded nicely and was so packed with metaphors and symbolisms in the writer's/writers' heads, but she/they did not manage to transition her/their ideas to the screen in a really convincing manner.
Here and there, I also felt the film was just too much trying to make an impact in terms of as many controversial and socially relevant subjects as it could. Take the lesbianism aspect, take the discrimination coming from the other kids and that is not even all. It's okay they included all this, but they did not manage to build a convincing story around it. The best example is the African woman's character being so scared because of visions of another girl. You could never be sure if she meant the protagonist's daughter or another. As a consequence, the oh so shocking and meaningful final shot felt just as pretentious and for the sake of it as the film's title. It is never explained in the film why it is like that. Same is true for the girl's talent to smell all kinds of things, even a coffee stain in a book or her mother far away. I mean this scene was nice, but in the overall picture quickly forgotten like the rest of it all and added not a lot. Or the scene when the girl fights back somehow when she is attacked and chokes or so by these other children. I am talking about the moment when they make her eat soap. This could have been another great addition story-wise, but all we understand is that something bad then happened as a consequence to at least one of the other kids. Maybe more. It was still funny to see the mother (and daughter) unleashing then on the other woman. Another scene I remember was the octopus scene. Now that was just harsh. Not so cool. The protagonist's father also stayed a bit in the mind with his words and actions here and there. I would say he almost felt like an antagonist with some of the stuff he says and does, not right from the very first scene where he still wants to help the young woman and proposes to take care of the girl, so she can spend some time alone with her man, but afterwards. The alcohol on the food thingey for the young girl was just one example.
Completely away from that, the film in general also makes decent use of Exarchopoulos's stunning physicality. There is no denying she is still a looker. You can debate if her acting talent is on par with her looks, but I think she did alright here with what she was given and the negative issues do not lie in her performance. As she plays a very gifted swimmer, we also see a great deal of naked skin from her here. Not a big surprise I assume. I will certainly not complain. If I understood correctly, she was a dancer before that. Maybe she is too old for that now or not at 100% physically anymore, so she switched to swimming? But still, her explanation about why you should only swim for half an hour or so in the cold water stayed in my mind. At least I learnt something here if the film did not wow me. I kinda felt Exarchopoulos had a pretty deep voice here. I am not sure if I remember this from her big breakthrough film, but I don't know. Her characters seem to like smoking and maybe the actress is not completely against it either. Another symbolism or whatever you wanna call it the idea of bruised eyes or faces. We see it on the colleague (she is the one played by the stunning Daphne Patakia no?) and we also see it on the African woman. You could have thought there that we will see more characters like this, but it did not happen. You do get a scene thought where Patakia's face is explained. Again a flashback and there is also some jealousy and cheating story attached to it. I am sure that eventually Exarchopoulos' protagonist does not care and maybe everybody is now really with whom they should be to find a bit of happiness. The protagonist's boyfriend or husband not sure also knew about what was going on between his sister and his girl and this surprised me a bit.
Much more than anything else, however, this film was all about stylistic choices. You will find some of the most memorable ones on the film poster too, like how we see the main character blurry and as if she had 4 twins or so, but it was all seen through the eyes of the girl then in this scene. Or glasses I should say maybe. This was the scene with the karaoke if I remember correctly, when the two girls sing a Bonnie Tyler song together that is featured on several occasions here. The song is better than the movie without a doubt, but it is slightly exaggerated in terms of how meaningful it wants to be too, so this it has in common with the film. The film ends with a pretty dramatic moment of poisoning that I found less memorable somehow than the depiction and explanation of how they kept the woman from freezing to death out there, so yeah the impact this film had on my was just not big enough for a thumbs-up here. You can skip this movie, even liking Exarchopoulos will not be enough to really make it worth it. I am glad it did not run for two hours. I would not blame the audience here if they do not really understand or find a connection with this movie, but rather the script. Sometimes less is more and of course you can guess a lot here like if maybe the young protagonist does not even exist, but then you will see that her mother agreed that she could so something in the swimming pool or that she defended her after the conflict with the other girls/parents etc. So yeah, I find it fairly difficult to make something out of all this. Clearly, there was so much ambition here to this film and you can easily see they wanted it to turn into something huge. But it is no such thing. Watch something else instead.