Joseph believes that if he can locate their parents, who abandoned them years ago, everything will be healed. The film follows their escape from the institution and their trek across a cold, indifferent France. They hitchhike, steal, and survive on the margins of society. It is a road movie where the road offers no freedom, only a series of closed doors and hostile strangers. The title Les Diables is rich with irony. In the eyes of the social workers, the police, and the people they encounter on the road, the children are "devils." They are disruptive, unclean, and socially aberrant. Chloé’s public outbursts draw stares of disgust; Joseph’s feral defense of her often leads to violence.
In the pantheon of early 2000s French cinema, few films carry the raw, suffocating weight of Christophe Ruggia’s Les Diables (The Devils). Released in 2002, the film arrived as a visceral shock to the system—a road movie devoid of redemption, a fairy tale steeped in grime, and a love story that defies the moral boundaries of its audience. Les Diables -2002- Vk
However, Ruggia flips the script. The true "devils" of the film are not the children, but the society that created them. The institutions meant to protect them are prisons. The adults they encounter—from the abusive truck drivers to the indifferent state apparatus—are the ones who lack souls. Joseph and Chloé, conversely, possess a kind of pure, untainted innocence. Joseph believes that if he can locate their