Written by Ladj Ly, Giordano Gederlini and Alexis Manenti
Directed by Ladj Ly
Starring Damien Bonnard, Alexis Manenti and Djibril Zonga
MPAA rating: R for language throughout, some disturbing/violent content, and sexual references
Running time: 1 hour and 44 minutes

by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy

Sadly, this film may suffer some blowback because France chose it over Portrait of a Lady on Fire as its Oscar submission this year. And while I love Portrait, I can understand why they chose this instead. While Portrait’s story is timeless and could take place anywhere, Ladj Ly’s feature debut, Les Misérables, is urgent and (while you can translate the events to many places) very much a story about France, the suburbs of Paris and, specifically, Montfermeil (where Victor Hugo wrote the novel of the same name).

Right after seeing this film at last year’s Philadelphia Film Festival, I heard people comparing it to the Denzel Washingto/Ethan Hawke film Training Day. While I understand that the basic concept of a cop, freshly transferred from another division, is dropped into a shitstorm on his first day, these movies are exceptionally different otherwise. TD is the story of a dirty cop getting brought in by an undercover cop. It’s very much the story of two men. Les Misérables, on the other hand, is a story about the city, the people that live in it and the cops that patrol it. 

While not based on Hugo’s novel, this is, in a way, a modern retelling of the tale. None of the characters or plot lines are the same, but its attempts to so completely represent the various factions that make their portion of the city go but are, simultaneously, tearing the entirety apart.

The film opens with people filling the Paris streets, celebrating France’s 2018 World Cup victory. This, in itself, is setting the scene for some important things going on. Here’s some background. Many nationalists (read racists) were troubled that 14 of the players on the team were of African descent and many were Muslim. Some complained that it wasn’t really France’s team and a couple larger news outlets even touted France as “Africa’s sixth team”. Like many other countries, France has a large faction of people that believe that if you aren’t white and Christian, you aren’t really a representative of...whatever country they are talking about. You may remember Trevor Noah’s entry into this conversation.

From there, two different stories unfold. One follows the aforementioned cops and the other the lives of children and young teens in a majority Muslim immigrant neighborhood. With the cops, Ruiz (Damien Bonnard) is the new guy, and is introduced to Chris (Alexis Manenti) and Gwada (Djibril Zonga). Chris is white, and proud to be called a pig while Gwada is of African descent but, as we see later, goes along with whatever bad decisions Chris makes. It’s clear as Ruiz is shown around that everyone else at the station regards these two as the worst possible people he could get teamed up with. They are idiots, as well as assholes.

As the cops show Ruiz around the area they patrol, you see them interact with many different people, but it’s always dismissive and demeaning. Ruiz is the audience stan in here. They are dragging him around, with their behavior getting worse and worse, and he’s just trying to keep up. They introduce him to “The Mayor” (Steve Tientcheu), who is really the local “crime boss”, for lack of a better term. There’s tensions between the African neighborhood and a nearby Roma neighborhood. The Roma suspect someone from The Mayor’s neighborhood of stealing the lion from their circus. Ruiz is feeling the tension in the situation and, in turn we feel it in the audience.

Meanwhile, we get introduced to the kids in the neighborhood.For the most part, they are kids getting up to kid mischief. One of the boys has a tendency to fly his drone outside of different girls’ windows to peep on them, but one of those girls catches him and threatens him into deleting the video.  But of course, one of the kids DID steal that lion.

So this is where the kids’ and cops’ lives intersect. As the cops are trying to recover the lion to keep the peace in the neighborhood (but mostly to keep on The Mayor’s good side), they end up shooting one of the kids with a “beanbag” riot round. Also, the drone kid caught it all on video. As  the cops try to track down the kid and the video, the tensions ratchet up. There are a couple of references to the 2005 French Riots and how this could be even worse. As the story continues to play out, each player in this game has to decide what is best for themselves, their community and, really, the entire country. Do you face the racism and xenophobia head on, or do you minimize it in order to minimize the violence?

The performances are all very strong and this is written in a way that (like it’s namesake) you get to know about each of the characters and their motivations. It doesn’t run on too long or get lost in asides (unlike its namesake). Instead, it feels appropriately frenetic. I look forward to seeing what’s next for Ladj Ly, as this is a very strong feature debut.