Sébastien Marnier signs a small family thriller from behind the faggots with The Origin of Evil. The director ofImpeccable with Marina Foïs and Exit time with Laurent Lafitte gets along when it comes to building a full-bodied suspense around a dysfunctional family. Laure Calamy, a penniless young woman, discovers there a father she had never known (Jacques Weber) as well as his wife (Dominique Blanc, brilliant) and his daughter (Doria Tillier) who welcome her with moderate enthusiasm.
“I was inspired by my own mother who found her biological father when she was an adult, explains the director to 20 minutes. But this crazy family is not mine. In a sumptuous villa, the games of power are organized around a weakened patriarch and a substantial inheritance. The good fairy Claude Chabrol leaned on a deleterious bourgeoisie that Sébastien Marnier enjoys confronting with his greed. “My universe is more queer and baroque than that of Chabrol”, he specifies.
Both dark and colorful
Sumptuous sets serve as a setting for acidic and joyful confrontations against a backdrop of class struggle. Each revelation hits the bull’s eye around funny ladies who carry a diabolical plot. “We are voluntarily in the farce and the theater. Korean cinema and its changes in tone influenced me a lot”, insists the filmmaker. Laughter, anguish and even fear (Dominique Blanc is really creepy) follow one another for an enjoyable film where all the protagonists take it for their particle. “My characters are both touching and monstrous, like the film, I wanted them dark and colorful” insists Sébastien Marnier.
But what is the terrible force that engulfs the heroes? “When I started writing the script, I thought it was family, then I thought it was money, then patriarchy, says the director. I ended up concluding from it that, if all these reasons were valid, the origin of the evil in this family is the lie. These are the secrets that rot the lives of the protagonists that Sébastien Marnier takes pleasure in gradually revealing to the delight of the viewer.