By Lindsey Bahr
A mysterious woman, down on her luck and working a miserable job at a tinned fish factory, makes contact with the extremely wealthy father she's never met — and his suspicious heirs — in the French thriller "The Origin of Evil."
Though the title may conjure up associations with jump scares, hauntings and demonic possessions, this film, now playing in 200 theaters in North America, draws its inspirations not from horrors but from the psychological, erotic thrillers of the 1980s and 1990s.
The mystery woman, Stéphane, is played by Laure Calamy, an actor familiar to anyone who devoured the French comedy series "Call My Agent!" The New York Times said the film was "' Succession' meets Brian De Palma. "
Like many French filmmakers before him, Sébastien Marnier fell in love with cinema through Hollywood movies. Thrillers like "Basic Instinct," "Fatal Attraction" and "Single White Female" made a big impact on him as a teenager. They were exciting, usually featured strong and dangerous women at the heart of them and, of course, they were sexy, which at 14 or 15 was a "really big deal," he laughed in a recent interview.
"American cinema is really the foundation of my cinephilia," Marnier said through a translator. "What I like to look for is finding that feeling that American film gave me when I was a teenager, but making a truly French film with those feelings. So how do I take the inspiration that I felt as a teenager from those emotions to make a truly French film that is taking place on the French territory?"
With "The Origin of Evil" he wanted to pay homage to those films and put them within a distinctly French context. Influences range from Claude Chabrol to "Parasite." A playful mixture of genres, it's scary at times, but also funny, offbeat and, yes, sexy, as Stéphane, who is in a romantic relationship with a volatile imprisoned woman, navigates the personalities in her father Serge's (Jacques Weber) orbit: His spendy wife Louise (Dominique Blanc), his daughter George (Doria Tillier) who is angling to push him out of the business, a jaded granddaughter (Céleste Brunnquell) and their unfriendly maid (Véronique Ruggia).
Though the origin of this story comes from a very personal place — Marnier's mother, who made contact with her father later in life — he hopes it has broader commentary on issues affecting modern France.
"I think 'The Origin of Evil' talks about the end of a certain French society, the end of a powerful patriarchy, the end of a super-rich right wing dominant class, especially in the Riviera, a very rich class that was anti-Semitic and extremely powerful," said Marnier. "And it's in this confrontation of two worlds that we find a tension that France, is really experiencing at the moment. There's something very French, I think, in the way the film captures the class struggle."
It's also a film where no one is quite what they seem, and it keeps you guessing and second guessing until the very end. Instrumental in this was the casting of Calamy.
"She has something that's quite rare in French cinema, which is that she's very beautiful and sexy, but on the other hand, she's also banal in the good sense of the word. She's really the woman next door," Marnier said. "And because of things like 'Call My Agent!,' we like her. We have an empathy for her.
"If I had cast Isabelle Huppert, we would know right away that she was going to kill everybody," he added.
Stéphane, it should be said, does not "kill everybody," but she has her dark secrets too.
Of that De Palma comparison, Marnier deflects. It is, he said, much too much. "I don't deserve that," he said. "He's one of my favorite filmmakers."
He's mostly just excited that after a few films, he's finally got one that's playing in American cinemas too.
"It's really moving and beautiful," he said. "My other films were released on platforms in the U.S., but to be released theatrically is a great gift."
Lindsey Bahr is an AP film writer
James Earl Jones, Lauded Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies At 93
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, "The Lion King" and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
"The need to storytell has always been with us," he told The Associated Press then. "I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn't get him."
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit "The Great White Hope," the writer Alex Haley in "Roots: The Next Generation" and a South African minister in "Cry, the Beloved Country."
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as... Read More