''Les Misérables'' is a 2019 French
crime thriller film
Crime film is a film belonging to the crime fiction genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and fiction. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine with many other genres, such as drama or gangster film, but al ...
directed by
Ladj Ly
Ladj Ly (; born 19 March 1980 in Paris) is a French film director and screenwriter. He won a Jury Prize in Cannes Film Festival for ''Les Misérables'' in 2019. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
Biography
Ly's ...
in his full-length feature directorial debut, from a screenplay by Ly, Giordano Gederlini and
Alexis Manenti, based on Ly's 2017 short film of the same name. Manenti stars alongside
Damien Bonnard
Damien Bonnard (born 22 July 1978) is a French actor.
Filmography
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bonnard, Damien
1978 births
Living people
French male film actors
21st-century French male actors
People from Alès
Male ...
, Djebril Zonga, Issa Percia, Al-Hassan Ly, Steve Tientcheu, Almany Kanoute and Nizar Ben Fatma.
The film, set in the
commune of
Montfermeil
Montfermeil () is a commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in ...
in the aftermath of the
2018 FIFA World Cup
The 2018 FIFA World Cup was the 21st FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for national association football, football teams organized by FIFA. It took place in Russia from 14 June to 15 July 2018, after the country was awarded t ...
, is based on a real-life occurrence of police violence which took place in the city on 14 October 2008, and was observed and filmed by Ly. The story follows several characters within the commune, as a theft from a teenager spirals into the threat of a large crisis. The film's title is a reference to the
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo, vicomte Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romanticism, Romantic author, poet, essayist, playwright, journalist, human rights activist and politician.
His most famous works are the novels ''The Hunchbac ...
1862 novel
of the same name, written in Montfermeil and partially set in it; in the novel, Montfermeil is also the setting of the meeting of
Jean Valjean
Jean Valjean () is the protagonist of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel ''Les Misérables''. The story depicts the character's struggle to lead a normal life and redeem himself after serving a 19-year-long prison sentence for stealing bread to feed his ...
and
Cosette
Cosette () is a fictional character in the 1862 novel ''Les Misérables'' by Victor Hugo and in the many adaptations of the story for stage, film, and television. Her birth name, Euphrasie, is only mentioned briefly. As the orphaned child of an ...
, a girl abused by her adoptive parents. The film depicts abuses against poor citizens, especially teenagers of sub-Saharan African or Maghrebi ethnicities, thus stressing the continuity in the fate of the poor in Montfermeil.
It had its world premiere on 15 May 2019 at the
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Film Festival (; ), until 2003 called the International Film Festival ('), is the most prestigious film festival in the world.
Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from all around ...
, where it won the
Jury Prize. It was released in France on 20 November 2019 and received critical acclaim, earning twelve nominations at the
César Awards
The César Award is the national film award of France. It is delivered in the ' ceremony and was first awarded in 1976. The nominations are selected by the members of twelve categories of filmmaking professionals and supported by the French Min ...
and winning four including
Best Film. Among other honors, it was selected as the
French entry for the
Best International Feature Film at the
92nd Academy Awards
The 92nd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored films released in 2019 and took place on February 9, 2020, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, beginning at 5:00 ...
, eventually achieving the nomination.
Plot
The film begins with images of the crowd in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
celebrating the victory of the
French team at the
2018 FIFA World Cup
The 2018 FIFA World Cup was the 21st FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for national association football, football teams organized by FIFA. It took place in Russia from 14 June to 15 July 2018, after the country was awarded t ...
on the
Avenue des Champs-Élysées, perceived and celebrated in France as a moment of brotherhood among people of different social classes, ethnicities, and backgrounds.
Soon after, Stéphane Ruiz, a police officer who recently moved to Paris and joined the anti-crime brigade, is assigned to work with squad leader Chris and brigadier Gwada on duty in the nearby city of
Montfermeil
Montfermeil () is a commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in ...
. Chris often aggressively abuses his power on young people, with Gwada complacent in that abuse; while feeling unease, Stéphane doesn't interfere. Meanwhile, Issa, a known
juvenile delinquent
Juvenile delinquency, also known as juvenile offending, is the act of participating in unlawful behavior younger than the statutory age of majority. These acts would be considered crimes if the individuals committing them were older. The term ...
, steals Johnny, a lion cub, from a circus, causing its owner Zorro to go to the local community leader known as "the Mayor" and threaten to return with firearms if Johnny is not returned. Chris and his squadron are tasked with finding and retrieving the cub.
One of Issa's friends takes a picture of Issa with the cub and posts it on
Instagram
Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...
, leading Chris to find out that Issa is the culprit. They chase, capture, and handcuff him, but he claims that the cub had run away. Issa's friends then attack the three officers, throwing things at them to stop them from taking Issa in. When Issa tries to run away, Gwada, having accidentally tear-gassed himself during the chase, shoots him in the face with a
flash-ball. Issa's friends scatter, but the squadron realizes that they have been filmed by a drone, which escapes. While Stéphane wants to take a badly wounded Issa to a hospital, Chris and Gwada refuse, and instead, the trio take him with them in their search for the drone's owner.
The trio arrives at a local neighborhood contact of Chris, leaving Issa in their care and using information given to them by that contact to find Buzz, the person the drone belongs to, forcing him to flee before he can upload the video. Buzz, who still carries the drone's memory card, escapes the squadron and takes shelter with Salah, a restaurant owner and key member of the local
Islamic community. Both the squadron and the Mayor, having found out, arrive at Salah's restaurant. After a tense confrontation during which Chris attempts to illegally arrest Buzz, Ruiz convinces Salah to give him the memory card, claiming that Issa's shooting was just an accident.
After recovering Issa and the cub (which happened to be spotted near them), the squadron takes the two to the circus. Although Issa is made to apologize, Zorro attempts to lock him as well as the cub inside a cage with a lion, scaring Issa into wetting himself and almost making Stéphane shoot the lion until Issa is eventually let go. Deciding that Issa has learned his lesson, Chris drops him off and warns him not to tell anyone what happened and, if asked about his injury, to say that he slipped and fell. In the evening, the characters involved in that day's event seemingly return to their normal lives, some with visible signs of distress and doubt. Issa, who had been told earlier that his father did not want him back home because of his behavior, sits alone on a ruined couch, traumatized. Later that night, Ruiz meets Gwada in a bar and tells him that he knows that a flash-ball cannot be fired by accident, and that Gwada had therefore intentionally shot Issa. Gwada blames his stress and the group for overwhelming him, and Stéphane, while unconvinced, leaves Gwada with the card, telling him to "do what you gotta do."
The next day, the squadron, while on patrol, gets attacked by a small group led by Issa. They chase them, falling into Issa's trap and ending up assaulted by a much larger group of young people, leaving them trapped from all sides in a stairwell and fighting for their lives. Chris is wounded when a bottle breaks on his face, and the backup car Stéphane radios for gets immediately destroyed by the young people, forcing the backup policemen to flee. They also attack the Mayor's office and end up clubbing him and throwing him down a set of stairs. Stéphane pounds on the nearest door, begging for help, which happens to be the door to Buzz's apartment; however, Buzz further locks the door. Issa lights a
Molotov cocktail
A Molotov cocktail (among several other names – ''see '') is a hand-thrown incendiary weapon consisting of a frangible container filled with flammable substances and equipped with a Fuse (explosives), fuse (typically a glass bottle filled wit ...
and prepares to finish the squadron off with it, leading Stéphane to point his gun at him and warn him not to. The screen fades to black as both Issa and Stéphane try to decide what to do next, and a quote from
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo, vicomte Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romanticism, Romantic author, poet, essayist, playwright, journalist, human rights activist and politician.
His most famous works are the novels ''The Hunchbac ...
's ''
Les Misérables
''Les Misérables'' (, ) is a 19th-century French literature, French Epic (genre), epic historical fiction, historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published on 31 March 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. '' ...
'' appears: "Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad humans. There are only bad cultivators."
Cast
*
Damien Bonnard
Damien Bonnard (born 22 July 1978) is a French actor.
Filmography
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bonnard, Damien
1978 births
Living people
French male film actors
21st-century French male actors
People from Alès
Male ...
as
Brigadier
Brigadier ( ) is a military rank, the seniority of which depends on the country. In some countries, it is a senior rank above colonel, equivalent to a brigadier general or commodore (rank), commodore, typically commanding a brigade of several t ...
Stéphane Ruiz
*
Alexis Manenti as Chris
*Djebril Zonga as Gwada
*Issa Perica as Issa
*Al-Hassan Ly as Buzz
*Steve Tientcheu as The Mayor
*Almamy Kanoute as Salah
*Nazar Ben Fatma as La Pince
*Raymond Lopez as Zorro
*
Jeanne Balibar
Jeanne Balibar (born 13 April 1968) is a French actress and singer.
Life and career
Balibar was born in Paris, the daughter of Marxist philosopher Étienne Balibar and physicist Françoise Balibar.
She started her career as a student in th ...
as The Commissioner
Production
In October 2018, it was announced Damien Bonnard, Alexis Manenti and Djebril Zonga had joined the cast of the film, with Ladj Ly directing from a screenplay he wrote alongside Giordano Gederlini and Alexis Manenti.
Release
The film had its world premiere at the
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Film Festival (; ), until 2003 called the International Film Festival ('), is the most prestigious film festival in the world.
Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from all around ...
on 15 May 2019. Shortly after,
Amazon Studios
Amazon MGM Studios is an American film and television production and distribution company owned by Amazon, and headquartered at the Culver Studios complex in Culver City, California. Launched on November 16, 2010, it took its current name on O ...
acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film. It also screened at the
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the most prestigious and largest publicly attended film festivals in the world. Founded in 1976, the festival takes place every year in early September. The organi ...
on 10 September 2019. It was released in France on 20 November 2019 by
Le Pacte
Le Pacte is a French motion picture company headquartered in Paris. It specializes in film distribution, co-productions and international sales. It was founded by Jean Labadie in November 2007, shortly after he was forced out of his previous co ...
. It was released in the United States on 10 January 2020.
Reception
Box office
By 31 December 2019, 1,7 million tickets had been sold for ''Les Misérables'' in France. It grossed $330,181 in the United States and Canada and $18,8 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $19.2 million,
against a production budget of about $2.5 million.
Critical response
, of the reviews compiled on review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
are positive, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "''Les Misérables'' transcends its unwieldy story with compelling ideas and an infectious energy that boils over during a thrilling final act." On
Metacritic
Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
, the film has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Political reactions
''
Le Journal du dimanche
''Le Journal du Dimanche'' (; ), also known as the JDD , is a French weekly newspaper published on Sundays in France.
JDD was bought in 2023 by Vivendi of media mogul Vincent Bolloré, triggering a strike movement against the new editorial s ...
'' revealed that
Emmanuel Macron
Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron (; born 21 December 1977) is a French politician who has served as President of France and Co-Prince of Andorra since 2017. He was Ministry of Economy and Finance (France), Minister of Economics, Industr ...
was "upset by the accuracy" of ''Les Misérables'', so much so that he "asked the government to hurry to find ideas and act to improve living conditions in the
banlieue
In France, a banlieue (; ) is a suburb of a large city, or all its suburbs taken collectively. Banlieues are divided into autonomous administrative entities and do not constitute part of the city proper. For instance, 80percent of the inhabitant ...
s".
Jacques Dion, in ''
Marianne
Marianne () has been the national personification of the French Republic since the French Revolution, as a personification of liberty, equality, fraternity and reason, as well as a portrayal of the Goddess of Liberty.
Marianne is displayed i ...
'', said that "
acron
Acron (), son of Zeno of Elea, was a Medicine in ancient Greece, Greek physician born at Agrigentum (Gk. Acragas) in Magna Graecia.
Life
The exact dates of Acron is not known; but, as he is mentioned as being contemporary with Empedocles, who di ...
must never have heard of the for the banlieues that he himself had abandoned."
People such as
Jean-Louis Borloo
Jean-Louis Marie Borloo (; born 7 April 1951) is a French politician who served as president of the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) from 2012 to 2014. He also was Minister of the Economy, Finance and Employment in 2007 and Minister of ...
support the film,
and
Valérie Pécresse
Valérie Anne Émilie Pécresse (; Birth name, née Roux ; 14 July 1967) is a French politician who has been the President of the Regional Council (France), President of the Regional Council of Île-de-France since 2015. A member of The Republic ...
wrote in a tweet: "Proud that the region supported #LesMiserables a real film about the banlieue, which alerts us to the absolute necessity of a plan for the banlieues which does away with ghetto neighbourhoods, with a real ten year strategy!"
Awards and nominations
See also
* ''
La Haine
(, ; released in the United States as ''Hate'') is a 1995 French social thriller film written, co-edited, and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. Starring Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé and Saïd Taghmaoui, the film chronicles a day and night in ...
'', a film with a similar theme and setting
*
*
List of French submissions for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film
*
List of hood films
This is a list of hood films. These films focus on the culture and life of African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and, in some cases, Asian Americans, Asian-Americans or White Americans who live in segregated, low-income urban c ...
References
External links
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Miserables, Les
2019 films
2019 drama films
2019 thriller films
2010s French-language films
French thriller films
Films set in 2018
French crime drama films
Films set in Île-de-France
Films set in Paris
Films shot in Île-de-France
Films shot in Paris
Amazon MGM Studios films
Best Film César Award winners
Films about juvenile delinquency
Films about police officers
Films about police misconduct
Features based on short films
Films about drones
2010s French films
Le Pacte films
Best Film Lumières Award winners
Social thriller films
Cannes Jury Prize winners