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    ‘The Origin of Evil’ Review: Daddy Issues

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    “Succession” meets Brian De Palma in this delicious family-fortune thriller from France, directed by Sébastien Marnier.Think “Clue” by the French seaside, add a splash of sleaze, crank up the queerness, and you get “The Origin of Evil,” a catty family-fortune thriller by the writer and director Sébastien Marnier.When her landlady gives her the boot, Stéphane (Laure Calamy), a worker at a sardine-tinning factory, contacts her estranged father, Serge (Jacques Weber), an extravagantly wealthy restaurateur in the vein of Logan Roy from “Succession.” Like Logan, Serge is fed up with his parasitic kin, and behind his ailing, burly grandpa look, there’s old-fashioned alpha-dog savagery.Serge’s relatives, however, are nothing like the inept Roy offspring: There’s his ice-queen daughter George (Doria Tillier), who manages his businesses; his wife, Louise (Dominique Blanc), an impeccably coiffured, Gloria Swanson-type; and the stony maid, Agnès (Véronique Ruggia Saura).These ladies aren’t fooled when mousy Stéphane arrives at the family’s island mansion claiming to want nothing but bonding time with dad. Stéphane may be angling for a cut of Serge’s fortune, but so is everyone else. Marnier captures these power plays by framing the characters in playful split-screens à la Brian De Palma.On the mainland, Stéphane pays routine visits to her incarcerated girlfriend, whom she keeps spellbound with sexual favors. Her loyalty, touching at first, grows increasingly questionable.Marnier shakes up the balance of sympathy as Serge’s misogynistic mean streak becomes apparent. Foul as they are, Stéphane’s evil stepmother and sister may be worth rooting for. A tremendous Calamy (of “Full Time” and the TV series “Call My Agent!”) is central to the film’s gripping uncertainty.Abounding with nasty women, “The Origin of Evil” could have easily been flattened by the weight of a feminist objective. Untethered from such neat messaging, this decadent murder-movie takes the online credo, “be gay, do crimes,” and runs with it — to delicious results.The Origin of EvilNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Two Tickets to Greece’ Review: Advisory Travel

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      Former middle-school friends with clashing temperaments take an Aegean excursion in this contrived French fluff.In “Two Tickets to Greece,” Blandine (Olivia Côte), a depressed and divorced Frenchwoman, is pushed by her son to take a Hellenic excursion with Magalie (Laure Calamy), the middle-school best friend she lost touch with decades earlier. Magalie, now a free-spirited, impulsive music journalist, can find fun anywhere. Blandine, a buttoned-up radiology technician embittered by her ex-husband’s remarriage, seems incapable of experiencing fun at all.As teenagers, the two had planned to travel to the Greek island Amorgos, which entranced them in the 1988 movie “The Big Blue.” But when Magalie skimps on ferry tickets, the barely reunited pals wind up waylaid on a different, tiny island populated almost exclusively by archaeologists and surfers. And while Magalie will turn any location into a makeshift disco, Blandine, who refrains from a fling with a Belgian surfer, remains a stick in the Aegean mud.Calamy has by far the livelier part, and the energy dissipates whenever Magalie isn’t drawing attention to herself. When she and Blandine reach Mykonos, the movie brings aboard Kristin Scott Thomas — largely speaking fluent French — as Bijou, a hippie jewelry designer hiding from a British upper-crust background (and living with an artist played by Panos Koronis, of “The Lost Daughter” and “Before Midnight”).Bijou becomes an unofficial referee and wisdom dispenser for the central pair, as well as a facile expository device for the writer-director, Marc Fitoussi. Blandine — “bland,” per Bijou — and Magalie never totally reconcile their conflicting instincts, but “Two Tickets to Greece” is still pretty dopey and contrived, even if the scenery isn’t bad.Two Tickets to GreeceNot Rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Full Time’ Review: No Rest for the Working Girl

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      A breathlessly tense portrait of modern labor, this French drama stars Laure Calamy as a single mother who hits her breaking point during a nationwide strike.“Full Time,” the second feature by Éric Gravel, begins with a womblike moment of rest before pushing the pedal to the floor and launching us into the chaotic workweek of Julie (Laure Calamy), a single mother and the lead chambermaid of a 5-star hotel in Paris.Julie’s routine is demanding yet commonplace: She drops the kids at the nanny’s house, rushes to make the train, endures a lengthy shoulder-to-shoulder commute and settles into her shift tending to the whims of the hyper-wealthy. Then it’s back to the exurbs and the restless little ones, while the slivers of time she manages to carve out for herself are consumed by applying for a new job. Then repeat.The film is a portrait of modern labor that moves with the breathless tension of a Safdie brothers’ joint. But instead of gangsters and cocaine, it finds a flurried momentum in one ordinary woman’s everyday obligations, which threaten to break her when a nationwide strike throws her tenuous act off balance.Unpredictable public transport delays and cancellations get the worker bee in trouble with her snooty boss and septuagenarian nanny, while taxi rides that cost triple the rate of a regular ride drain her bank account. Her ex-husband hasn’t paid his alimony and hasn’t been answering his phone, and it’s their eldest child’s birthday this weekend. Improvisation is necessary, from hitchhiking to nudging the doorman for favors, but Julie — given anxious verve by the always-magnetic Calamy — isn’t a shameless hustler so much as she is acting sheepishly out of necessity.Julie isn’t in a position to throw off her uniform and hit the streets in protest, but the movement (and the inconveniences it causes) isn’t the problem — it’s a symptom. Worked to the bone because of her inability to find decent employment and child care, because her supervisor only values her insofar as she obeys like a robot, Julie is a veritable Everywoman, in thrall to a system that demands productivity at every turn. Such a life makes one brittle, but there are no breaks.Full TimeNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More