Arch riot of treachery and toxic femininity
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL HHHH
Selected cinemas; UK Cert 15
The likes of Saltburn, Succession and White Lotus have done the cash-strapped masses a great service. More than merely showing us how the tortured, tasteless lives of the megarich are (probably) nothing to be envied, they’ve taken on the qualities of a latter-day freak show.
How unlike us they are, we scoff from our couches on a Tuesday evening. Their gross displays of privilege and indulgence are so not how we would behave – were we born into such incomprehensible wealth. That’s what we tell ourselves anyway.
This platinum-standard schadenfreude extends to a new twisty saga of monied familial dysfunction from France.
The Origin of Evil is the fruity end of the noir thriller, the place to come if you like your crosses doubled and maybe doubled again. Sebastien Marnier’s film has enormous amounts of fun with the filthy-rich class and the heirs and heiresses who exhibit quite the nose for blood when the subject of wills is on the table.
Into this car-crash backdrop, the story (co-written by Marnier and Fanny Burdino) channels a slippery Hitchcockian tale of false identity and confidence fraud, like a camp Gallic take on The Talented Mr Ripley.
Marnier’s cast of characters are a right bunch of rotters, but Stephane (Laure Calamy from Call My Agent) is about the closest we come to a protagonist.
She looks dejected and burnt out when we first meet her, slumped in the dreary staff locker room of the fish-canning factory (with toilet cleaning, one of the lowest rungs of the jobs ladder, according to cinema) where she works.
As her lover (Suzanne Clement) serves time in a women’s detention centre, Stephane succumbs to desperation after her kindly landlord is forced to evict her so that the room can be freed up for a relative.
Stephane decides the time is right to reach out by phone to the father she never knew growing up. On a waterside bench somewhere in the south of France, she has a first encounter with Serge (Jacques Weber). They exchange cautious pleasantries, before the elderly man is confident enough to invite her back to his home.
They journey there via chauffeur, and on arrival at the huge gates of Serge’s resplendent chateau, Stephane sees for herself the sheer scale of daddy’s wealth.
It’s about as far away from her daily existence of anchovy processing and prison visits as she could imagine. There’s something odd about it all though, mind. Stuffed animals are dotted everywhere, and rooms and corridors are piled high with unopened parcels. There’s also an atmosphere you could cut with a knife.
Enter Serge’s eccentric, spendthrift wife, Louise (Dominique Blanc), who immediately tells Stephane that she sees no resemblance. Following the rear is George (Doria Tillier), the eldest daughter of Serge and Louis who makes no attempt to hide her resentment to Stephane’s materialisation. The pair are quite something. George is a cold and austere captain of industry, while Louise’s days are spent ordering gaudy bespoke rubbish which she never even opens.
Stephane has stepped into a bear pit, one made all the more tense with the ticking time bomb foreshadowed by Serge’s ailing health. But when she fibs over dinner that the fish factory is actually her own business, a chink appears in the otherwise endearing facade of Stephane. She’s a bit of an operator herself, it turns out. Let the games commence.
It’d be ruining things to divulge much more about this deliciously noxious confection. What we can say is that Steve Martin and Michael Caine weren’t the last dirty rotten scoundrels to befall the French Riviera. Marnier attains a great feeling of side-stepping and evasion, allowing the juicy reality of the set-up to declare itself gradually. Things descend into a riot in the third act as accumulated sins come home to roost. Arch treachery is rarely this much fun. Look elsewhere if you’re seeking restraint and everyone getting what’s coming to them.
The main triangle around which everything revolves is that of Calamy, Tillier, and the delightfully dotty Blanc. What a fabulous nest of vipers they create, each unpleasant in their own way and yet somehow plausible in pursuing their own interests.
In a week where cinemas also welcome Benoit Delhomme’s hair-raising domestic thriller Mothers’ Instinct, it would seem that French filmmakers are currently peddling a strong line in toxic femininity.