Les cinq diables

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.

The Five Devils: The eponymous devils are actually five mountain peaks which provide a backdrop to the events in this French feature. Vicky (Sally Dramé) is a precocious, solitary child who is bullied at school. She has an extraordinary sense of smell, even able to track down her mother in a forest. Her mother Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulos) is a swimming instructor, fed up with her firefighter husband Jimmy (Moustapha Mbengue), she reflects on her past glories as a swimming champion and local beauty queen. Vicky uses her facilities with scents to create copies of those of people close to her. She enters trances, travelling back in time, experiencing the events as they occurred. Things become even more fifficult for the Solers when Julia (Swala Emati), Jimmy's sister, comes to live with them. Why Julia left the the mountain town ten years ago and how it affected Jimmy, Joanne and another teenager, Nadine (Daphne Patakia) is central to the narrative. A dark film in places, entering into the slipstream of horror. Vicky seems to indirectly influence events in the past and bring physical objects back. Sally Dramé is wonderful as Vicky, accepting her abilities, not put out by her time travels but upset by her parents' deteriorating relationship. Adèle Exarchopoulos potrays the still beautiful and fit Joanne, but longs for her lost teenage years and perhaps more. She swims in an icy mountain lake for twenty minutes each day, almost as a self punishment, a great performance. Emati's fiery Julia is haunted by demons, not just of her past but those she encounters now. Mbengue;s Jimmy tries to be the anchor for this unhappy family. A story of love, guilt and elements of darkness and horror. Directed by Léa Mysius, who co-wrote the screenplay with Paul Guilhaume. 8/10.

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.

Les Cinq Diables, from director Léa Mysius, begins with intrigue but never fully delivers on its concept. Adèle Exarchopoulos is magnetic in every scene, and Sally Dramé rivals Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) as the cutest kid ever. If this movie shines for any one reason, it is that we get to spend 96 minutes with these two.

The story and storytelling, however, are the weakest links. For a good chunk of the film, the story sort of meanders without any real sort of tension, presumably to tease out the mystery. Some plot points end up going nowhere, the climax that gets supernaturally pieced together doesn't pack the punch it seems it is going for, and I think a lot more could have been done to bring the themes home and make it far more powerful. In a way it reminds me of a Jacques Audiard film in the way it unloads a lot of rich theme but does not tie it down neatly for the viewer--which may be frustrating for some audiences and thought-provoking for others.

Les Cinq Diables is an ambitious film that lays decent groundwork but never seems to find its footing. It may leave enough for some interesting discussion on the interface between sexuality and relationships through the eyes of the innocent, but its clever approach more often gets entangled in subpar storytelling and a loosely-threaded plot.

Watch it for the cute kid and for the goddess Adele. Skip if you desire a more cohesive narrative.

"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.