The Origin of Evil

Stéphane works in a cannery and is cornered: nowhere to live, no money, and a partner in prison. She calls the father she has never met. He is very rich: a large house on an island, money made in textiles, and a family nothing like her. His wife, his daughter and his granddaughter are in the house and none of them wants her there. She stays. Everyone in the house has a calculation, and she is hiding something too. Sébastien Marnier directs. The cast includes Laure Calamy, Doria Tillier, Dominique Blanc, Jacques Weber and Suzanne Clément. The genre is family thriller and the tone is deliberately excessive; the house, the costume and the colour are not realistic and the narrative uses that as style. The structure is multi perspective. At certain points the narrative rewinds and shows the same event through another person, and every repetition changes the information. The subject is money and class. Nobody is good; everyone is thinking about the inheritance, the position and their share, and the film passes no moral comment. Laure Calamy was known for comedy and is somewhere entirely different here. It screened out of competition at the 2022 Venice film festival. Who it is for: viewers who like French thrillers and family stories worked in an excessive style. Who it is not for: none of the characters is sympathetic, the plot is over convoluted, and the ending settles into genre.