This French film begins almost as an eccentric comedy, but very soon “The Origin of Evil” (L’origine du mal in the original) will turn into a rather dark thriller. The screenplay and direction of the film premiered in one of the accompanying sections of the festival in Venice is signed by the not too well-known Frenchman Sebastien Marnier. And that transition from something seemingly casual, eccentric to something rather dark is completely unexpected and it is the film that hides a handful of surprises. In the center of attention is Stephane (the busier and better Laure Calamy), a 40-year-old fish-processing plant worker who is seriously penniless.
We see how the landlord throws her out on the street, and she is in a relationship with a rather unstable woman who is in prison. However, as an answer to Stephanie’s problems, her father will appear, an old man who has long since disappeared from her life, with whom she has not been in contact since childhood. Serge (Jacques Weber) later became rich, he is a real estate tycoon, the owner of a hotel and restaurant chain who lives with his new wife Louise (Dominique Blanc) and daughter George (Doria Tiller) in a luxurious villa on an island. Apparently, the old weirdo was hoping for sons, so he gave his daughters male names, and it’s easy to assume that not all of them will be particularly thrilled because someone else has appeared who apparently claims Serge’s inheritance.
They all live in a magnificent, but kitsch and typically tastelessly decorated villa, as the homes of people who got rich quickly and jumped into Manolo Blahnik shoes from the poor house usually look like, and they clearly let Stephane know that she is not welcome. All the more so because Louise and George are in the process of depriving an old man of his business ability who recently suffered a severe stroke, and the sudden arrival of his long-lost daughter seems to be a lifeline for him. At least that’s how it seems until the turning point of the film, for which Marnier obviously found models in Hitchock’s classics, but also in the work of his much more famous compatriots such as Francois Ozon and Claude Chabrol.