The Origin of Evil Review: A Stage for Borrowed Parts, from De Palma to Chabrol

Sébastien Marnier’s The Origin of Evil is a thriller with scant thrills but plenty of echoes of better, more explosive works. It opens with a slow-motion tracking shot of young women inside a locker room in various states of undress, but rather than land on a showering teenager being horrified by her womanhood, as in Brian De Palma’s Carrie, the camera stops on the upturned face of Stéphane (Laure Calamy). It’s a naked allusion and nothing else. To wit, the film’s later, recurring use of split-screen—another staple of De Palma’s voyeuristic cinema—exudes a visual anonymity, as if Marnier were working from a checklist.

A middle-aged factory worker who’s in significant financial straits, Stéphane is soon off to the tiny island of Porquerolles in the south of France, “the most beautiful spot on Earth” according to her estranged billionaire father, Serge (Jacques Weber). Once back at his island mansion, Stéphane looks at the artwork, exotic plants, high ceilings, and wine cellar with a wonderment that points more to the film’s own enthusiasm for aristocratic décor than any interest in compellingly building a theme around notions to wealth, excess, and generational contempt.

On the surface, The Origin of Evil recalls the psychological thrillers of Claude Chabrol, but its situations and dialogue have the edge of a dull knife. The characters tend toward caricature, like Louise (Dominique Blanc), Serge’s current wife, who mostly spends her days smoking cigarettes, swilling Chardonnay, and making quips about those around her. All admirable pastimes, to be sure, but because The Origin of Evil isn’t outwardly parodic or uniquely comedic, Louise’s characterization is but one rote choice in a long line of them, including the predictably dysfunctional extended family, the half-hearted digs at generational differences, the hidden secrets, and the disguised motives that Stéphane’s presence will inevitably bring to light.

The film’s almost robotic devotion to formula makes it especially difficult to ignore its leaden pacing. Scenes of little significance, usually hinging on awkward silences or revealing characters’ paltry peccadillos when they aren’t simply serving an expository function, drag on past the point of remote interest. The Origin of Evil recalls Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness for how its prolonged, soft-peddled skewering of the wealthy seems convinced of its Buñuelian irreverence.

As Stéphane is challenged about her legitimacy and makes trips back to the mainland, which include rendezvouses with a lover (Suzanne Clément), family members quarrel, threaten physical violence, and stand around their exquisitely adorned abode whispering their schemes to one-up one another. But don’t expect the tension of a powder keg about to go off, a la the finale of Chabrol’s La Cérémonie. In line with Marnier’s more middlebrow proclivities is an unwillingness to push the inert material past a certain threshold of unease or subversiveness.