Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Sébastien Marnier
Starring: Laure Calamy, Jacques Weber, Dominique Blanc, Doria Tillier, Céleste Brunnquell
Though she's been plying her trade for two decades now, it's in the
last few years that Laure Calamy has established herself as one
of the most exciting actresses of today's talented French crop. Equally
adept at comedy and drama, Calamy gets to express both those sides in
Sébastien Marnier's The Origin of Evil, in which she plays a klutz who convinces herself she has what it
takes to be a femme fatale.
Like
Saltburn, The Origin of Evil is another variation on films like
The Servant
and Teorema, in which an outsider causes havoc in the home of a wealthy family.
The interloper here is Calamy's Nathalie, who seeks out wealthy property
magnate Serge Dumontet (Jacques Weber), posing as his long lost
daughter Stepháne. Nathalie is in dire straits, having been made
homeless by the return of her landlady's estranged daughter, and is fed
up of working at a fish processing plant and rowing with her
incarcerated girlfriend (Suzanne Clément).
Serge immediately warms to Nathalie, but standing in the way of her
plans are the women of the Dumontet family. Serge's wife Louise (Dominique Blanc), who spends her days ordering expensive items from a TV shopping
channel, seems to know what Nathalie is up to but doesn't have the
energy to stop her. Their daughter George (Doria Tillier), on the
other hand, is determined to put an end to her scheme. They're both
aided by housekeeper Agnes (Véronique Ruggia), whose look seems
to be modelled on Alida Valli's stern ballet teacher in Argento's
Suspiria.
The latter is one of several nods to genre cinema of the past in
Marnier's film. It opens with what seems like a homage to De Palma's
Carrie
as the camera glides through a steamy locker room. The exposed female
flesh here doesn't belong to high school girls however but to embittered
fish plant workers washing the stink of anchovies from their middle-aged
bodies. Like De Palma, Marnier makes liberal use of split-screen, but in
a quite novel way. There's a scene early on in which Nathalie is being
interrogated at the Dumontets' dinner table. It's important that the
camera remain on Calamy's face so we can see how Nathalie is forced to
quickly improvise answers to questions she hasn't fully prepared for, so
rather than cutting between separate close-ups of the various parties
stationed around the table, Marnier uses split screen to keep Calamy on
screen as the other segments of the screen cut between her
interrogators.
It's easy to understand why a director would want to avoid cutting away
from Calamy, as she really is entrancing here. As an audience member
you're almost afraid to blink, lest you miss some subtle gesture from
the actress. There are some wonderful moments of black comedy, like
whenever Nathalie finds herself the recipient of some overly physical
attention from the man who believes she's his daughter. At the same time
she's also convincingly threatening as Nathalie becomes increasingly
conniving in her plot.
The Origin of Evil never quite elevates itself to the
level of a classic Claude Chabrol thriller however, as Marnier fails to
to structure his film in a way that generates the necessary tension and
suspense. There's no likeable figure here in this bunch of sociopaths,
but there's something ambitiously admirable about Nathalie that makes
the audience want to root for her plot to succeed. And yet we rarely get
the sense that Nathalie is in any real danger of being caught until very
late on. As such, The Origin of Evil succeeds as a black
comedy but squanders its potential to become your new favourite French
thriller.
