Léa Mysius’ time machine
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THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
The “unknown of the lake”: giving a wink, in a feminine version, to the film by Alain Guiraudie, a cult thriller in the field of gay dating, seems quite appropriate to tackle the second feature film by Léa Mysius. Not just because The Five Devils, revealed in May at Cannes at the Directors’ Fortnight, is set in snow-capped mountains overlooking clear, smooth water. But each of these two fictions, as different as they are, says something powerful about sexual freedom. In the mode of suspense with Guiraudie, in a fantastic vein with Mysius.
Vicky (Sally Dramé), a mixed-race girl with an Afro cut, lives with her dad, Jimmy, a firefighter (Moustapha Mbengue), and her mom, Joanne, a lifeguard (Adèle Exarchopoulos). The days drag on, a bit gloomy, and Vicky, endowed with an overpowered sense of smell, keeps busy making potions, sticking on her bottles some scary labels, “Mom 1”, “Mom 2”, “Mom 3”… Until the day when Jimmy’s sister, Julia (Swala Emati), comes knocking at the door, after several years of absence. Without even knowing her, Vicky doesn’t love her. Unless she had known her in a past life?
Born in 1989, the director Léa Mysius digs the furrow of the genre since her first films: short films Exquisite Corpse (2012) – where a body lies in a pond –, The yellow island (co-directed with Paul Guilhaume in 2015), or even his first “long”, Avarevealed at Cannes in 2017, at Critics’ Week, Noee Abita embodying a young girl who loses her sight. Stubborn, rough heroines, in search of experiences, as the filmmaker herself was during her adolescence, concocting strange perfumes with her twin sister, Esther Mysius. Which has become one of his closest collaborators, production designer and artistic director on his films. Let’s add a fellow cinematographer, Paul Guilhaume, who signed the image of The yellow island, ofAva, and Five Devilsthen a brother manager, Nathan Mysius, who also officiates on the set.
Is it the family humus that makes the work of the filmmaker so coherent and unique? Four pairs of eyes are better than one and Léa Mysius has been tracing her path incredibly since graduating from La Fémis, the prestigious Parisian film school. It goes straight, towards who knows where, like the foreground, an expressway overlooking a lake that seems asleep. A decor unearthed by the twin sister of Léa Mysius, setting up an atmosphere à la Twin Peaks. Soon, the image will blush under the effect of a fire, the 35 mm film adding grain (to grind) in the dream machine.
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