After taking Portrait of a Lady on Fire's spot as France's official submission to the 2020 Academy Awards, plenty were upset with Ladj Ly's Les Misérables — which gained considerable momentum at the Cannes film festival. Breaking away from the plot of the famous novel of the same name and its various adaptations, Les Misérables follows a man named Stéphane (Damien Bonnard) who joins an anti-crime squad in Paris. Teaming with the harsh and brash Chris (Alexis Manenti) and the temperamental but respected Gwada (Djibril Zonga), Stéphane quickly sees first hand the level of violence and conflict coming between the public and the police in a complicated web of factions and alliances. After a confrontation goes wrong and Gwada ends up seriously injuring a kid, the anti-crime squad must track down a drone filming the incident before the footage gets out and possibly ruins the team.

From the very first scene in the film, Les Misérables' most successful and compelling feature is that of the community and the world that the film takes place. This is not a clean, glorified version of Paris. Instead, it is dirty and genuinely feels lived in and soaked in the harshness of reality, with warring factions and deep history of various races and groups. The thematic shaping of its setting adds a compelling impact on the overall narrative. Paris might not be a kind or friendly community but it is one that thrives with a pumping heart. Les Misérables is conscious of this living community with one of the most significant ideas it decides to explore being the consequences individuals can have on a community.

For around a decade, Chris and Gwada have been a violent presence in their neighbourhood, a sentiment that has not gone without adaptation and retribution. Whether an individual is a force of good or bad, that force is felt on the world around them and evolves the surrounding society around them — easily the most explicit and interesting thesis that Les Misérables unravels. However, past the theme of consequences and individualism, Les Misérables struggles to create a multitude of engaging ideas and adequately explore them. Beginning with the one-note characters, none of them are necessarily uninteresting, as they all seem to have layers of depth and emotion past their outward appearance of strength and confidence. Nevertheless, the film does a rather poor job of exploring them.

Much of this film takes place in the heat of the moment, where there is no room for real character development or reflection in such a tense pace. Towards the end, there is a snippet of reflection, which feels like the film just about changing gear and getting to the point. Unfortunately, it then switches to its genuine finale, which not only feels unnecessary but confusing in regards to some of the other conversations ongoing within the film.

At no point are the characters and their motivations well defined enough for the audience to be able to infer answers. The film never decides to explore more profoundly than a thin layer, ultimately making characters far harder to understand and therefore laborious to sympathize with. Where it is clear that not a single character is genuinely supposed to be seen as innocent, it is hard to find one to get behind. Stéphane comes the closest, as he is the central perspective the film follows, and seems to have the best heart out of anyone, but by the end, he makes questionable choices of complicity and acceptance, which makes it impossible to support the arc of the character.

The editing of the film is difficult to follow at times. Les Misérables has several moving elements and people to follow and the film is continuously cutting between them. There are plenty of moments where the narrative ends up feeling messy and unclear, often making the audience lose track of what exactly is going on and what the complex array of relationships mean.

Les Misérables has reputable intentions and tries to create something of substance to mixed results. The world of Paris is intriguing and memorable but overall, the story feels much more inferior to the intended output. Some compelling ideas do come through but the overwhelming majority of depth fails to rise to the surface. The script is far too muddled and obtuse for it to truly have the effect that it was going for and become something that would stand out, especially in such a great year of foreign cinema.

LES MISERABLES is released January 10th (U.S.) and April 24th (U.K.) 2020

Les Misérables

Honeyland

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