A young girl’s uncannily sharp sense of smell induces visions of a time before she was born in Léa Mysius’s arresting, genre-inflected follow-up to Ava, her feature debut, which received its Irish premiere at the IFI French Film Festival in 2017. Vicky (Sally Dramé) is a solitary child who lives with her depressed swimming instructor mother Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and fireman father Jimmy (Moustapha Mbengue) in the shadow of The Five Devils, the titular mountain range that offers a stunningly scenic backdrop. Vicky’s close bond with her mother is threatened by the surprise arrival of Julia (Swala Emati), her father’s estranged sister who left town ten years ago under a cloud, and into whose orbit Joanne is inexorably drawn.

Shot on 35mm, The Five Devils is a rapturously beautiful, enigmatic, and endlessly debatable work by a director to watch.

Notes by David O’Mahony