The Origin of Evil review – classy comedythriller with shades of Succession and Knives Out
Succession meets Knives Out in this comedy-thriller directed by Sébastien Marnier in what is an extremely French comic style: tongue-in-cheek, a little frothy, tiptoeing close to camp. It stars Call My Agent’s brilliant Laure Calamy as a scheming factory worker who wheedles her way into a dysfunctional mega-rich family. Calamy is often cast as likable, relatable women but here she does a very convincing Isabelle Huppert (circa her Claude Chabrol years); there’s something a bit off about her character from the start, possibly even unhinged.
Calamy is Stéphane – at least that’s what she calls herself. Bored of her job on the production line at a fish factory, and broke, out of the blue she calls her father, a self-made hotel and restaurant tycoon. (They’ve never met; she is the result of one of his many affairs.) This is Serge (Jacques Weber), an ageing lion of a man, with a mane of white hair, frail after a stroke but still dangerous.
Some of the funniest scenes are at his villa, garishly filled with taxidermy and ghastly furniture. Serge introduces Stéphane to his wife Louise (Dominique Blanc), a frivolous compulsive shopper with a bitchy streak, and their glossy adult daughter George (Doria Tillier), who drops her mask of impassive disdain to shoot Stéphane dagger stares. In the double crossing and backstabbing that follows, no one is blameless. Serge is a monster of Logan Roy proportions. George is trying to seize control of the family business, and have her dad declared incompetent by a judge.
For a while The Origin of Evil looks like it might shake out as a feminist tale: the women uniting to topple an oppressive patriarch. But Marnier’s script, co-written by Fanny Burdino, is more cynical than that, and casting the normally likable Calamy only adds to the air of deception, keeping us guessing about her character’s motives. With
out a doubt this is easy entertainment, never dull, and it has some shrewd things to say about class and money – though the satire might have been sharper and the running time shorter by a good 20 minutes.
• The Origin of Evil is in UK cinemas from 29 March.