No./14 Cinema’s new superpower: smell
Fantastical drama The Five Devils features a magical nose
WHAT IF YOU could dive into people’s memories by recreating their scent? That’s the question explored in Léa Mysius’ offbeat drama — named after the five mountain peaks in the French Alps that give the film’s village setting its name — which follows Vicky (Sally Dramé), a little girl whose hyper-keen sense of smell leads to her accessing her mother Joanne’s (Adèle Exarchopoulos) inner life. The filmmaker tells Empire about creating a fragrant fairy tale.
THE IDEA
Vicky’s gift was born from a conversation between Mysius and her co-writer, Paul Guilhaume. “He grew up in Paris, I grew up in the countryside,” she explains. “He said that Paris smells really bad, so he was used to not smelling; he blocked off that sense.” Mysius thought about how her countryside upbringing had done just the opposite, and her appreciation of smell and its ability to trigger memories became the basis for the movie.
THE SORCERY
Mysius’ own origin story helped to fuel the magical-realism elements of the film, in which Vicky collects objects in jam jars and cooks them to replicate personal smells. “I’m from a region of France [near Bordeaux] which has a longstanding history of magical prowess,” she explains.
THE BOND
For the casting process Mysius had auditioning girls make potions, and while she admits that Dramé didn’t have much aptitude for that particular assignment, she found her fascinating regardless. “She had these huge eyes,” Mysius remembers. “She looked so unique, so eerie, like she could be 1,000 years old, or she could be eight years old.” The mother-daughter bond was integral to the story, as Vicky clings to Joanna while she is shunned by her small-town peers. “I gave [Adèle] this image of a giraffe that’s sombrely, slowly pacing, and this little bird is fluttering frantically around her head, picking her,” says Mysius. A little bird with a mighty nose. It doesn’t get much more magical than that
THE FIVE DEVILS IS IN CINEMAS FROM 24 MARCH