68
Metascore
19 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 91IndieWireSophie Monks KaufmanIndieWireSophie Monks KaufmanSome viewers may be frustrated by the opaque way all threads are resolved. To the end, Mysius retains the sense of her film being a glistening and mysterious object, you can watch but can’t touch. Yet this intact mystery flows from themes too vast to ever be rendered fully transparent: young girls are prescient and love is fate.
- 83The PlaylistElena LazicThe PlaylistElena LazicThe Five Devils feels like the inevitable encounter of indestructible drives, which send sparks flying both when they are satisfied and when they are denied.
- 83The Film StageAlistair RyderThe Film StageAlistair RyderIt’s a deeply transfixing sophomore feature that, beneath genre artifice, tells a much more direct tale of familial bonds than her debut. Overlook the mysterious time-traveling conceit and you’ll find an irresistibly prickly drama about family and generational trauma.
- 80The New York TimesBeatrice LoayzaThe New York TimesBeatrice LoayzaSmell is perhaps the most opaque of the five human senses; the one that’s hardest to put into words. No wonder it’s key to the uncanny intrigues of the film, part queer love story, part supernatural psychodrama, by the French director Léa Mysius.
- 80Time OutTime OutFor all its structural ingenuity, The Five Devils is fundamentally a love story, and a surprisingly affecting one, largely due to a captivating central performance from Exarchopoulos, who, a decade after becoming the youngest ever winner of the Palme d’Or (for Blue is the Warmest Colour), gives a performance of such nuance and sophistication, the rest of the adult cast struggles to keep up.
- 75Slant MagazineJake ColeSlant MagazineJake ColeThe film is a thorny exploration of how individuals’ personal ordeals can quickly merge into an impenetrable thicket of irreparable relationships.
- 75Original-CinLiam LaceyOriginal-CinLiam LaceyIn the end, there’s insufficient emotional pay-off or psychological insight here to justify the credibility-defying tricks and narrative convolutions. But the kid is adorable and Exarchopoulos, as the hot and cold Joanne, is believable at every moment, in a film more attuned to mood and sensation than literal meaning.
- 60Screen DailyLee MarshallScreen DailyLee MarshallBuoyed by two outstanding performances – from Adèle Exarchopoulos and first-time child actress Sally Dramé – and shot in ravishing 35mm, The Five Devils is a finely-crafted drama-genre hybrid, let down only by the fact that the story is a lot less interesting than the themes it carries.
- 50The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerThe Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerMysius goes all out here, but her film overshoots its target by a few miles, even if the mise-en-scène is inspired and lead Adèle Exarchopoulos excellent as always.
- 40The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawSomehow it doesn’t all come together, delivering neither the stab of actual fear nor the satisfaction of real, plausible psychological insight.