The root of all evil? Money, naturellement. Stacks of it, poured into a lavish villa on the French Mediterranean island of Porquerolles and frittered away in a unilateral war waged by a bored, ignored shopaholic wife against her overbearing husband. But even €1,500 a day squandered on everything from designer handbags to taxidermied endangered species to shopping channel tat fails to make much of a dent in the wealth of the Dumontet family, a clan that could give Succession’s Roys a run for their money in toxicity, treachery and obscene riches.
Into this nest of Lanvin-clad vipers stumbles Stéphane (Call My Agent!’s Laure Calamy), a pleasant, seemingly unremarkable youngish woman who works at an anchovy-packing factory and, without a place of her own, sofa-surfs in the apartments of her long-suffering friends. And so the scene is set for Sébastian Marnier’s enjoyably pulpy, devious, Highsmith-esque thriller in which nothing and nobody are quite what they seem.
Stéphane, after the death of her mother, has finally plucked up the courage to contact the father she has never known: the ailing, silver-haired Dumontet patriarch, Serge (Jacques Weber). They meet on his territory, on the quay where the ferry from the mainland disgorges its well-heeled visitors to the island, and from there to one of his many business concerns, a busy beachside bistro.
It’s an emotional moment for Stéphane, who giggles winsomely and fawns over the cantankerous old man. Serge, for his part, is charmed by her fluttery concern for his comfort and health and, you suspect, by the novelty of discovering a direct relative who doesn’t loathe him with every pilates-toned fibre of their being. It may be that Serge has a genuine interest in getting to know the woman who claims to be his illegitimate offspring, but it’s more likely that his main motive in inviting Stéphane to his home for lunch is his malicious relish in the upset it will cause to the rest of the family. And on that level at least, the lunch is a resounding success.
Serge’s spendthrift wife, Louise (Dominique Blanc), trailing chiffon and entitlement, sweeps into the drawing room in which Stéphane has been abandoned by Serge (like all spoiled rich kids, he soon grows tired of a new toy). She appraises the newcomer, notes that she probably takes after her mother rather than her father, and adds, cattily: “Serge was very popular with women. Some less attractive than others.” Serge’s frosty, imposingly chic daughter George (Doria Tillier), who has managed the family business since her father’s stroke and would prefer it if her dad would hurry up and die already, tells Stéphane, in no uncertain terms, to sling her hook. George’s sullen, silent teenage daughter Jeanne (Céleste Brunnquell) glumly adds her newly discovered aunt to the long list of things she is inevitably going to hate. And the Dumontet housekeeper, Agnès (Véronique Ruggia), is loyal to Louise and Louise alone, although not so loyal that she doesn’t steal from madame’s stash of binge-shopped booty to supplement her wages.
A split-screen device carves up the frame, lining up the family members like judge and jury, with Stéphane in the middle, squirming in her cheap floral dress. For her part, Stéphane is at pains to point out that she isn’t interested in the money, only in finding her family. But then she also brags that she owns the fish-processing plant where she works, suggesting that lying comes rather easily to her. And as anyone who has seen Saltburn will know, the super wealthy may be obnoxious and cruel, but the proles are shifty, grasping and absolutely not to be trusted.
There are clear thematic parallels with Emerald Fennell’s 2023 picture, and with The Talented Mr Ripley, but while The Origin of Evil is less showily outré than Saltburn (no bad thing), it also lacks the elegance, nuance and textured characterisation of Ripley. With the exception of Stéphane, who becomes more intriguing and less likable with each secret unpeeled, the main characters are a little schematic and two-dimensional. It’s fortunate, then, that the always impressive Calamy is on top form. Stéphane, we learn, is far more complex than we initially give her credit for. Her unthreatening ordinariness works rather conveniently in her favour. It’s only in retrospect that we come to appreciate the canniness beneath it all, both of the character and of Calamy’s agile, sleight-of-hand performance.
