The opening scene of Sébastien Marnier’s latest film The Origin of Evil is set in a women’s locker room where the camera moves ominously down the rows, lingering on the women in various stages of undress. These women inhabit an in-between world where they are not quite on the job (later we will learn they all work at a local fish factory) but not quite off, either. They are in transition, and the chimeric effect of watching each of them change in and out of uniform gives viewers the perfect transformative lens through which to view Marnier’s film.
The Origin of Evil follows Stéphane (Laure Calamy), a woman who has finally managed to track down her estranged father Serge Dumontet (Jacques Weber) in the hopes of getting to know him after all these years. Serge is a supremely wealthy but sickly man, and his wife and daughter are skeptical of Stéphane’s sudden appearance. Their relationship with Stéphane gets off to a rocky start, but as time moves on, all three women realize they have more in common than they initially thought. Marnier’s story is a juicy, drama-infused tale of deception with multiple layers of intrigue that are sure to keep audiences riveted to the screen. However, outside of its suspenseful plot, The Origin of Evil doesn’t really offer anything new to the con artist genre.
At times, the movie feels like a cross between Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite and Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman. Like the former, The Origin of Evil boasts a plot heavily steeped in class warfare and fraud, but like the latter, the film desires to lean into a classic female-empowerment-by-way-of-revenge tale that ultimately ends up missing its mark. This is most likely because the movie never really commits to a solid characterization of Stéphane, choosing instead to allow her to be just as mysterious to the audience as she is to the Dumontet family. But while this might work to build suspense in the film’s first half, it quickly falls apart in the second act. Stéphane is an interesting character, but the consequences of her actions would have been better felt had her backstory been more adequately explored.
Still, The Origin of Evil is not without its charms. Calamy is delightful as Stéphane shifts gracefully between innocent victim and conniving con artist. There are a handful of moments where Stéphane’s true motives shine through in delightfully unhinged ways — her exit from the fish factory after receiving a phone call is particularly memorable — and it’s a shame that the film doesn’t afford Calamy more opportunities to showcase this talent. The movie also makes good use of a menacing score that lingers in sinister background noise that builds suspense even in seemingly pleasant moments. What you see on screen is not always what it seems, and Marnier does an excellent job of keeping his audience guessing for a long while. Even when you think you have everything figured out, a new twist gets added in that causes you to question everything you thought you knew. Because of this, The Origin of Evil is truly a lot of fun even if it’s not perfect.
Photo courtesy of IFC Films
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