Every Cannes Film Festival, there is a quest to find the most iconic moment of the drop of the needle from the movies that play in each chapter. The 2022 gold medal goes to Léa Mysius for her rendition of Bonnie Tyler's '80s power ballad, "Total Eclipse of the Heart." The song is recorded at a karaoke night in a sleepy French village, selected by Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulos) for her and Julia (Swala Emati) to perform. Julia has the distinction of being Joanne's long lost high school sweetheart and the sister of the man she ended up marrying. When Julia suddenly returns after years of self-exile, the path back between them isn't the easiest. In her corner, helping out, is the roaring, roaring force of this raw anthem. Emat, a professional singer, and Exarchopoulos, an actress who puts her body into everything she does, gain confidence as the song reaches its irregular crescendo.
Later, at home, Jimmy (Moustapha Mbengue) sarcastically congratulates his wife on the show and points out that anyone who has seen it will know what he symbolizes. Joanna explodes. Her father has suggested that she and Jimmy are not having sex. Her lack of passion in her life, contrasted with the tactile paper igniting Julia's return, causes her to lose all composure, yelling at Jimmy, until he pushes her out of her room.
Director: Léa Mysius
Writers: Paul Guilhaume, Léa Mysius
Stars: Adèle Exarchopoulos, Swala Emati, Sally Dramé
“The Five Devils” is an elemental movie, as fire and water burn and flow throughout the runtime. Jimmy is a firefighter; Joanna, a lifeguard at a local pool. The opening sequence is a striking statement, as cinematographer and co-writer Paul Guilhaume shoots the girls in glittering gymnast outfits from behind as they watch a fire crackle against the pitch black of night. One of the girls turns around: it is Adèle Exarchopoulos. She cuts to the next scene of Joanne leading an aqua aerobics class at a senior citizens' pool. Next to her, leading the class from a much shorter point of view, is her daughter, Vicky (Sally Dramé), smiling with happiness to be close to her loving mother. Her next calling point is the local lake. Vicky helps cover Joanne's body in a layer of milk fat to protect her from the freezing water. It is a ritual that the two share every day. For Joanne, it is an act of extreme sensuality, at odds with the monotonous routine of her daily life.
Mysius has made a film enslaved by the body, often doggedly following Exarchopoulos, as Abdellatif Kechiche did in “Blue is the Warmest Color,” but with more restraint. As Joanne cuts vegetables, the camera watches from behind, capturing the way her muscles tense and move where her neck meets her back. Although she doesn't feel alive, she seems to say the movie, she seems to. This is a perspective that Mysius offers to all of her actors, as she and Guilhaume are focused on finding individual grace, regardless of what the characters are going through or how they are feeling. Just like her compatriots, Claire Denis, famous for photographing the actors as if she were in love with them, a clear benevolence surrounds all the inhabitants of “The Five Devils”.
When the camera isn't on Joanne, it's on young Vicky, a girl with unusual talents. Mysius' magnificent debut, "Ava" (which premiered at the 2017 Cannes Critics' Week) told the story of a 13-year-old girl who goes blind amid pain and desire for growth. This interest in sight evolves to the point of magical realism. Vicky has visions that turn out to be episodes from her mother's past. She also has an unearthly sense of smell and collects different specimens with different scents in labeled glass jars. These heightened powers of sight and smell are at odds with her social status. Born to a white mother and a black father, she is subjected to racist bullying at school, an environment in which she is very isolated, which strengthens the ferocity of her attachment to Joanne.
In both "Ava" and "The Five Demons," Mysius attributes great mystery to her childhood, casting her as a source of loss and strength that defies conventional understanding. Unlike Stephen King's Carrie White, whose telekinetic powers were activated by a desire for revenge against her cruel companions, Vicky is ambivalent about her bullies and focuses on the domestic space where she is free to make potions in the backyard. Mysius is less interested in spinning a clean and orderly story than in offering a cinema that is pregnant with inexplicable sensations.
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