THE FIVE DEVILS World Cinema

In this darkly enthralling tale, a strange little girl named Vicky (Sally Dramé) possesses an exceptional gift for scent. Adoringly attached to her mother Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulos), who is a swimming coach, Vicky secretly collects and reproduces concoctions of various scents in jars. When her father’s estranged sister, Julia (Swala Emati), unexpectedly returns to town, Vicky is transported into the untold past, uncovering family secrets including a suppressed love triangle that still echoes through the cracks of their sleepy Alpine village. Bursting at the seams with impetuous energy and anchored by the breakout performance from Dramé, THE FIVE DEVILS wears its genre proclivity with pride, unabashedly exploring witchcraft, time travel and the fascinating elemental canon of the fiery feminine. Featuring a needle-drop of the soon-to-be sapphic anthem “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” Léa Mysius (AVA, AFI FEST 2017) conducts a hauntingly mysterious love story that transcends linear time. –Anna Li