The root of all evil? Cash, naturellement. Stacks of it, poured right into a lavish villa on the French Mediterranean island of Porquerolles and frittered away in a unilateral conflict waged by a bored, ignored shopaholic spouse towards her overbearing husband. However even €1,500 a day squandered on all the things from designer purses to taxidermied endangered species to purchasing channel tat fails to make a lot of a dent within the wealth of the Dumontet household, a clan that might give Succession’s Roys a run for his or her cash in toxicity, treachery and obscene riches.
Into this nest of Lanvin-clad vipers stumbles Stéphane (Name My Agent!’s Laure Calamy), a nice, seemingly unremarkable youngish lady who works at an anchovy-packing manufacturing unit and, with out a place of her personal, sofa-surfs within the residences of her long-suffering pals. And so the scene is about for Sébastian Marnier’s enjoyably pulpy, devious, Highsmith-esque thriller through which nothing and no person are fairly what they appear.
Stéphane, after the loss of life of her mom, has lastly plucked up the braveness to contact the daddy she has by no means identified: the ailing, silver-haired Dumontet patriarch, Serge (Jacques Weber). They meet on his territory, on the marina the place the ferry from the mainland disgorges its well-heeled guests to the island, and from there to one in every of his many enterprise issues, a busy beachside bistro.
It’s an emotional second for Stéphane, who giggles winsomely and fawns over the cantankerous previous man. Serge, for his half, is charmed by her fluttery concern for his consolation and well being and, you observed, by the novelty of discovering a direct relative who doesn’t detest him with each pilates-toned fibre of their being. It could be that Serge has a real curiosity in attending to know the girl who claims to be his illegitimate offspring, nevertheless it’s extra doubtless that his essential motive in inviting Stéphane to his house for lunch is his malicious relish within the upset it should trigger to the remainder of the household. And on that stage not less than, the lunch is a convincing success.
Serge’s spendthrift spouse, Louise (Dominique Blanc), trailing chiffon and entitlement, sweeps into the drawing room through which Stéphane has been deserted by Serge (like all spoiled wealthy children, he quickly grows bored with a brand new toy). She appraises the newcomer, notes that she most likely takes after her mom moderately than her father, and provides, cattily: “Serge was extremely popular with ladies. Some much less engaging than others.” Serge’s frosty, imposingly stylish daughter George (Doria Tillier), who has managed the household enterprise since her father’s stroke and would favor it if her dad would hurry up and die already, tells Stéphane, in no unsure phrases, to sling her hook. George’s sullen, silent teenage daughter Jeanne (Céleste Brunnquell) glumly provides her newly found aunt to the lengthy listing of issues she is inevitably going to hate. And the Dumontet housekeeper, Agnès (Véronique Ruggia), is loyal to Louise and Louise alone, though not so loyal that she doesn’t steal from madame’s stash of binge-shopped booty to complement her wages.
A split-screen system carves up the body, lining up the relations like choose and jury, with Stéphane within the center, squirming in her low cost floral gown. For her half, Stéphane is at pains to level out that she isn’t within the cash, solely find her household. However then she additionally brags that she owns the fish-processing plant the place she works, suggesting that mendacity comes moderately simply to her. And as anybody who has seen Saltburn will know, the tremendous rich could also be obnoxious and merciless, however the proles are shifty, greedy and completely to not be trusted.
There are clear thematic parallels with Emerald Fennell’s 2023 image, and with The Gifted Mr Ripley, however whereas The Origin of Evil is much less showily outré than Saltburn (no dangerous factor), it additionally lacks the magnificence, nuance and textured characterisation of Ripley. Aside from Stéphane, who turns into extra intriguing and fewer likable with every secret unpeeled, the principle characters are a bit schematic and two-dimensional. It’s lucky, then, that the all the time spectacular Calamy is on high kind. Stéphane, we be taught, is way extra complicated than we initially give her credit score for. Her unthreatening ordinariness works moderately conveniently in her favour. It’s solely on reflection that we come to understand the canniness beneath all of it, each of the character and of Calamy’s agile, sleight-of-hand efficiency.
