Les Misérables is France’s Answer to Uncut Gems
Critics have been comparing Ladj Ly’s magnificent first feature, Les Misérables, to Training Day or the massively overrated La Haine. But, in reality, you can compare it to the Safdies’ Uncut Gems. Both movies have a way to induce total panic and anxiety throughout the entire runtime to make you feel incredibly stressed out and have an above-average heart rate at the end. The film follows Stéphane (Damien Bonnard) as he gets transfered to an anti-crime unit in the suburbs of Paris. He soon realizes that the two cops he is with are corrupt, and don’t play by the book. The ACU is tasked to retreive a lion cub that was kidnapped from a circus (a little bit like the Opal in Uncut Gems), but things go awry when one of the police officers, Gwada (Djibril Zonga), flashballs little Issa (Issa Perica) and is recorded on video via drone. What follows is a terrific exercise in tension building and anxiety inducing cinema.
The adage “Une jeunesse en colère refusera de se taire” is transposed brilliantly in Les Misérables. The first act has some of the most brilliant foreshadowing I’ve seen in any 2019 film, wonderfully presenting the world and characters of Les Misérables. The film is surprisingly funny, with its sharply written script with jokes and mannerisms that are straight out of the French suburbs. Ladj Ly is tricking you into relating to those characters using quick-wit and quippy-humor, à La Haine, to make you care about the ACU, but you shouldn’t. He even goes farther in presenting little Issa as a piece of garbage. He isn’t loved by his family, as he always puts himself into trouble and tries to do everything his way. When he steals the lion cub that almosts starts a war between “Le Maire” and the Zeffirelli Circus, all you think is “that piece of shit”. But there are many hints that reverse your initial expectations. When Chris destroys someone’s phone who tries to film him illegally frisking a young girl for marijuana, it foreshadows the events of Issa’s flashball, as it will be recorder on a drone and will destroy the reputation of the ACU. There are so many hints that reverse your perception of the main characters and Issa, that you may blind to. This is why you’re rooting for the cops during the second act of the film where they are tasked to find whoever stole Johnny, the Lion Cub. You’re thinking the police are in the right to do exactly what they’re doing to get to the bottom of this, until the third act kicks in, where Issa is flashballed.
After Issa’s flashball, this is where Les Misérables elevates from great, anxiety-inducing thriller to a magnificent revenge-drama. We observe the ACU trying to get the video of the drone flashballing Issa, and see, firsthand, the abuse of power and ego-trip of Chris. Alexis Manenti gives a power-house performance as Chris, whose volatile behavior goes back to his household. The way he treats his children as objects made me incredibly uneasy, but that’s the kind of character he is. He doesn’t care about family and a good, stable life. Only the power he holds as a corrupt police officer. But the real star of the movie is Damien Bonnard as Stéphane who gives his best performance since Alain Guiraudie’s Rester Vertical (Staying Vertical) as a cop who doesn’t seem to understand the world he just stepped in. It’s when he becomes powerless in “Le Maire”’s appartment complex that he realizes exactly in what world he stepped in.
The final scene of the film, where Issa exacts his revenge on the ACU that flashballed him, culminates the possible years of abuse he has gotten from Chris & Gwada. The scene that foreshadowed this event is when Chris threatens Issa that he got his eye injury from falling, because the only thing he’s good at is screwing up and getting himself into trouble. The agonizing cry Issa spews once he is told to lie is his breaking point. The meticulously executed plan Issa elaborates with his friends makes the entire climiax of the movie emotionally overpowering. The action is fully kinetic and tight, with some of the best cinematography I’ve seen in all of 2019. The final shot of Les Misérables is more poignant than Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite and Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman’s final shots. Ladj Ly knows exactly when to end the movie. We don’t need a hackneyed, pedantic resolution that almost ruined the entire movie like Parasite. We see exactly what Ly wanted us to see — a young generation fed up with how SOCIETY has been treating them, exacting their revenge and not shutting up. Even if Chris tells Issa to shut up, the young child decides not to do that, because he is fed up, not only fed up at himself, but mostly fed up at how these cops get away with everything since they do not play by the book. When the movie ended and Victor Hugo’s quote from Les Misérables appeared on the screen “Mes amis, retenez ceci, il n’y a ni mauvaises herbes, ni mauvais hommes. Il n’y a que de mauvais cultivateurs.”, everything made sense and I started to sob uncontrollably. The look on Issa’s eyes holding a Molotov Cocktail while Stéphane plays his game by pointing a gun at him in fear is exactly what you need to know — that he has become just like Chris & Gwada and can very well abuse his power as a police officer to save his skin.
The final shot made Les Misérables a better foreign language film than Pain & Glory and Parasite combined. The anxiety and stress you will get while watching this movie is as palpable as the one you get while watching Uncut Gems,with master performances and a thrilling climax that will make you sob uncontrollably and realize how WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY that never rewards the right people. Always remember that. Hail anxiety cinema.
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