RFS’s Summer film is the slow-burning and, at times, darkly comedic, French drama, The Origin of Evil - a psychological thriller in the Claude Chabrol tradition, with hints of Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell.

 

We follow an outsider who becomes embroiled in a web of upper-class family politics and malice. The film is largely set - as features about the super-rich often are - in a vast, resplendently over-decorated mansion. In this case, it is one stuffed to the gills with Chinoiserie and taxidermy on a secluded Côte d’Azur island, keeping its residents cushioned in comfort but not contentment.

 

The tale of family greed, double-crossing and toxic patriarchy (shades of Succession) gives a plum role to Laure Calamy as Stéphane, a financially distressed factory worker who sets out to finally meet Serge, her rich, previously unacknowledged father in the forbidding house he inhabits with his equally forbidding wife, daughter, granddaughter and maid. What starts ostensibly as a family reunion turns into a psychological drama with unexpected twists and turns, as layers of deception and hidden motives emerge.

 

What does Stéphane seek from her father? Revenge, money, love or all three? What does this ailing tyrant want from her? Unsurprisingly, his highly avaricious and seething family are none too pleased at Stéphane’s arrival and we wonder how they will deal with this cuckoo in their midst.

 

Nothing and nobody are quite as they seem in The Origin of Evil; traditional elements of storytelling seem at first to be withheld, only for them to be slowly revealed as the story unfolds. This makes for an unsettling tone at the movie’s outset, which can take some time to adjust to: are we in a social-realist comedy? Is this a dark-hearted thriller? Who is this protagonist about whom we know so little, other than that she is played by the winsome Calamy, trying her best in this hostile environment?

 

The film is fresh and breezy, with a snippy comic tone. It avoids descending into silliness because of the core humanity of Calamy’s presence, who skilfully shifts the tenor of her performance from guileless to guarded, all the while maintaining a kind of underdog integrity.

 

This increasingly dark French thriller premiered at the 2022 Venice festival but took an awfully long time to reach UK cinemas - and then only for an extremely brief theatrical release in March 2024. We are, therefore, pleased to finally have an opportunity to screen it - a clever, humorous and highly entertaining drama to bring the curtain down on Season 62.

 

Peter Maguire with acknowledgments to

Sight and Sound