Directors’ Fortnight entry “The Five Devils” centers on a young, nearly wordless girl named Vicky (first-timer Sally Dramé) who has a strange and extraordinary gift: she can reproduce any scent she finds, which she then bottles up in a collection of labeled jars.
Those captured scents include those of other people, and one of them is her mother, Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulos), with whom she has a parasitic relationship.The film shares DNA with writer/director Léa Mysius’ (co-writing with Paul Guilhaume) film “Ava,” a Critics’ Week entry in 2017 about a 13-year-old girl who learns she’s losing her hearing.
The filmmaker has a keen interest in the five senses (hence this film’s title) but also domestic discord, as the reappearance of Vicky’s aunt Julia (Swala Emati) throws things out of orbit in their small Alpine nestled at the feet of the mountains.
Once Vicky captures Julia’s scent,
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