‘The Five Devils’ Review: Strange French Thriller Imagines the Nose as the Window to the Soul

Cinema, as an artwork type, depends on two instruments — sight and sound — to idiot us into believing that each one 5 of our senses are being stimulated. That makes Léa Mysius’ more-intriguing-than-successful supernatural thriller, “The 5 Devils,” a really curious animal certainly, because it focuses on a younger woman with an exceptionally sturdy sense of scent, a phenomenon its director can present however by no means correctly reproduce.

Eight-year-old Vicky (Sally Dramé) can be proper at dwelling as one of many younger mutants in an “X-Males” film, so hypersensitive are her olfactory expertise. A future fragrance designer maybe, the frizzy-haired child spends her free time accumulating odoriferous scraps from her life and surroundings and storing them in neatly labeled jars. When her mom, Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulos), discovers Vicky’s reward throughout a stroll within the woods, she blindfolds her daughter and tries to cover underneath a pile of moist leaves. Sniffing the air, Vicky manages to find Joanne virtually instantly.

However Vicky’s means doesn’t cease there. For most individuals, scents can function triggers into particular recollections: A sure perfume reminds you of your grandmother; one other aroma whisks your ideas again to childhood. In Vicky’s case, those self same odors would possibly transport her fairly actually out of her personal life and into the previous, earlier than she was born. Bother is, that concept’s so novel, it’s not clear the way it works. Even stranger is the best way that when Vicky flashes again, she’s extra than simply an observer. At the least one particular person, her aunt Julia (Swala Emati), can truly see her throughout these visits — however once more, the foundations appear a bit hazy.

Can Vicky’s presence change the previous? Did this baby by some means will itself into existence, forcing her mother and father collectively? Alas, it’s all fairly complicated, and younger Dramé, who performs Vicky, isn’t but a robust sufficient actor to convey this mysterious character’s inside motivations. Nonetheless, Mysius’ idea tickles the creativeness: As youngsters, none of us actually is aware of our mother and father’ backstory, and in its extremely unique (if overcomplicated) means, “The 5 Devils” provides this one woman an opportunity to find the dramas and intrigues that predated her — just like the inferno we see raging within the opening scene. It would take the remainder of the film (and a number of other extra leaps again in time by Vicky) to clarify what precisely occurred that evening.

So far as the townspeople are involved, it’s a superb factor Julia was locked up after the hearth. However Joanne and her husband Jimmy (Moustapha Mbengue) have a extra difficult connection to the supposed pyromaniac, inviting Julia to stick with them after she’s launched from jail. Vicky appears instantly threatened having this stranger within the dwelling, and she or he units out to make her keep uncomfortable, concocting a foul-smelling brew of lifeless crow and her personal urine, plus numerous different stenches, which she slides underneath her mattress.

Nosing by Julia’s possessions, she discovers a particular vial — not fairly magic, however witchy in its impact: One whiff from the tube, and Vicky is knocked out, despatched again in time. Throughout these journeys, she begins to piece collectively the reality, discovering why her mother and father have such a chilly, dispassionate marriage. Each have been robbed of the ladies they liked, Vicky learns, which suggests her instincts have been proper: Julia actually might be a disruptive pressure to her household, not as a result of she’ll torch every part — although the likelihood looms massive — however as a result of she desires to run away with Joanne. And isn’t that form of the identical factor ultimately?

Psychologically, there’s rather a lot occurring in “The 5 Devils,” particularly in its wealthy mother-daughter dynamic, and Mysius (a sought-after French screenwriter whose credit embody Claire Denis’ “Stars at Midday” and Jacques Audiard’s “Paris, thirteenth District”) definitely has imaginative and prescient. However the “Ava” director is extra bold than she is profitable this time round.

The evocative challenge appears to be like nice, because of co-writer Paul Guilhaume’s gloomy however attractive widescreen cinematography, whereas odd noises and an unconventional, atonal rating preserve audiences on edge. But it surely doesn’t fairly add up, such that the long-awaited clarification for that opening blaze finally fails to light up. The film’s “Twilight Zone” coda is much more of a misfire. Vicky’s peculiar reward of scent could save the day ultimately, however reasonably than enriching the cinematic expertise, it renders all of it barely … nicely, nonsensical. Higher to have caught to the same old instruments of sight and sound, in that case.