10 year old Vicky (Sally Dramé) lives with her mother, fitness trainer Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulos), who works as a swimming trainer, and her father Jimmy (Moustapha Mbengue), a fire fighter from Senegal, in a small village in the French Alps. Vicky has an extraordinary sense of smell and collects smells in jars. When her aunt Julia (Swala Emati), whom Vicky never met, shows up by surprise and lives with them against Joanne‘s will, Vicky collects scent samples. When she smells them, she suddenly finds herself in the past, in the time shortly before her parents got together and gave birth to her. During this period, Joanna and Julia are still a couple and: Julia is the only other person who can see Vicky, the spirit from the future.

Lea Mysius (AVA) entangles the past and present in a magical way – the time periods interrelate through the characters of Vicky and Julia, whose sensibilities break through the teleological course of time. The fact that it is two Black women who have magical abilities is not unlike the cliche of characters of color with special spiritualities. Mysius debut AVA had a scene in which the 13 year old protagonist faced the terror of growing up and imminent blindness by putting on war paint as the “noble savage.“ In THE FIVE DEVILS, Vicky – similar to Marty McFly in BACK TO THE FUTURE – runs up against the past, against Julia, who is the cause of tension in the present, with supernatural energy. It‘s about childish magical thinking, and for Vicky it‘s about accepting a situation that initially seems threatening.

Lea Mysius is interested in the intense, direct feelings of children and teenagers. She manages to show Ava‘s anger and courage in the glistening light of the Atlantic coast. THE FIVE DEVILS, shot on 35 mm, creates a world that primarily consists of atmospheric intensity. The oppressive light in the narrow valley where the mountain village is, the cold of the sea that Joanna goes to swim in – all of this is combined to become a threat that threatens to implode Vicky‘s world. The genre crossover, somewhere between queer romance and mystery thriller, isn‘t always successful. Some plot points are too obvious, making the twists predictable. But Lea Mysius is on one of the most interesting paths in European auteur cinema.

Tom Dorow

Translation: Elinor Lewy