The Origin of Evil

The spectre of Patricia Highsmith looms large over Sébastien Marnier’s ingeniously plotted mystery, a tale of deception, cross, and double cross set against the fading grandeur of a sprawling family mansion, boasting a central character every bit as slippery and adept at reinvention as Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. The great Laure Calamy plays Stéphane, a woman in her forties who lives in financial precarity; she works at a fish canning factory while her lover serves out a prison sentence. One night, Stephané impulsively contacts her estranged and extravagantly wealthy father, Serge (Jacques Weber); posing as an entrepreneur, she attempts to ingratiate herself with Serge’s wife, Louise (Dominique Blanc), who is immediately suspicious of this interloper. The Origin of Evil is a delicious skewering of the decadent excesses of the aristocracy and the climbers who aspire to be among them.