Five Devils: Adele Exarchopoulos in a stunning fantasy drama

Ava, five years after her first feature film, Lea Missius returns with a completely different film called Les Cinq Diables. The screenwriter and director, who collaborated with Arnaud Desplechin, Jacques Audiard and Claire Denis, this time tells us about family and failed love by mixing drama and genre film.

With an impressive set enhanced by 35mm film that brings an almost magical texture, Leah Missius imbues her characters with a mystical and complex aura. “Five Devils” tells the story of how Vicky, a strange and lonely young girl, uses her overdeveloped sense of smell to transport herself through the memories of her family, her village and her own existence, and the arrival of her aunt throws everything off balance. Unconditional love for mom Joan.

He is currently playing a movie in cinemas Adele Exarchopoulosand revelation Sally Drama. AlloCiné had the opportunity to meet its director Léa Missius during the Cannes Film Festival, where the film was presented during the Directors’ Fortnight.

AlloCiné: You completely change the scenery compared to Ava, your first film. We leave the heat, beach and sand for mountains, forests and great lakes at Les Cinq Diables. Is the environment more conducive to imagination?

Lea Missius: Yes, it was my first instinct to make a new film as opposed to the previous one. For Les Cinq Diables, I immediately thought of the cold, and that influenced me to start writing this fantastic story. Obviously, I wanted landscapes that were both grand and at the same time suffocating and strange.

I also wanted the ordinary to make the extraordinary stand out more. But Esther Missius, the film’s art director and set designer, pushed me to go to France in an even more fantastical environment that we’re not used to shooting, which makes it possible to point out that the film is about gender. . And that’s the great thing, that way I could make the turn more fluidly and mythologize the story that I wanted.

The idea was to do a mural of characters with a fantastic story and this main character, Vicky, who is a quirky, burlesque, funny and annoying little girl. He has a talent for and obsession with scents, especially his mother’s, which he brews. And this faculty will allow him to learn the history of his family and reveal the secrets of his own existence.

A stream of fantasy and horror flows through the characters’ path in the film. We go from this lonely little girl to her family who has suffered a tragedy and to the entire village that is affected and also affects the characters. Apart from being a fantasy drama, the film is also a social drama.

The landscapes are also suffocating, and I wanted to talk about racism and homophobia, but not so directly as to show that evil can be very insidious and it can spread like poison. And sometimes we remain passive about it, and that’s dangerous. I wanted to distill that feeling with small, anxious moments in an already disturbing fantasy setting. I think it’s important to talk about this, especially in today’s political context.

However, there are quite a few frontal and striking scenes that are sure to elicit a reaction from the public.

Of course, because I also wanted the audience to be always active. It can be said that some things are not normal and that there are no good guys and bad guys. That everyone is human and has their own characteristics. And I promote reflection through the change of point of view during the story.

That’s why I wanted the viewer’s gaze to develop and always be in an active phase, with a rather political purpose. If we remain passive in the face of hatred and differences towards others, nothing will change.

The choice to shoot in 35mm brings a certain magic to the film and allows for a very rich, very warm image. Was it a will from the beginning?

I had already shot Ava in 35mm with Paul Guihoum, a cinematographer who is also a screenwriter. And I write very visually, very vocally, and the fact of writing with a cinematographer brings a real plus because he’s already thinking about what the image can do, even if I’m just thinking, but Paul brings movement.

At the beginning of writing, I thought about memories and imagined them in a flash, in a fixed plan. And we slowly wrote with the idea of ​​movement by taking the wiki directly into the memories we capture with a short focal length. It’s almost like a video game, and it’s thanks to the writing of these two hands.

That’s why I thought about shooting in 35mm from the beginning. And because of Covid, we’ve lost a lot of money, so we wanted to take 35mm away from us because it’s the first thing that comes out of the budget. I was really interested at the time. And then I thought about the Jordan Peele films, which are modern films with their very sophisticated digital.

And I said to myself “Why not imagine the five devils like this?” Finally, it was impossible for me. The movie was falling apart for me. A mix of spectacular, genre, fantasy, entertainment and mystery was my ultimate goal. The balance was disturbed and I was losing my mind. So we stuck to 35mm and made sacrifices elsewhere.

We think it’s just the medium, but there’s something powerful about 35mm, almost sacred, that clings to the energy and world of film. The feeling of watching the rushes arrive two days later is that desire that fuels the production. It affects the acting of the actors, the work of the technicians and my shooting.

The revelation of this film is Sally Drum playing little Vicky. Was it easy to find a young actor?

In fact, yes. He joined the cast quite early. When I saw it, I knew it was him. I walk by feeling, feeling, and I get the impression that I see my character when I see the right person. This is how I choose my actors. It was the same for Noah Abita in Ava.

Then, of course, we had to work. Because Sally couldn’t act at all. It was a composite role for him as he is very different from his character. But he managed to find it little by little. We worked for three months and then we had a year off filming due to Covid, weather and everyone’s availability.

But it wasn’t so bad for Sally because she was 8 when we picked her up and she was still young mentally. Meanwhile, he was afraid of losing his role, but he was still very young, so it was not a problem. And what was good was that he matured enough to help out on set.

Again, we worked very long with him, Adele, Mustafa (Mbengue). We worked a lot on facial and body expressions. And then we worked on texts and scenes. Sally grew in intensity and by the end of the shoot I was really guiding her like a professional actor.

Interview by Megan Choquet on May 23, 2022 in Cannes.