This movie, directed by Ladj Ly, grips the
audience from start to finish. (Review by Patrick Compton)
No folks, this is not the Hugh Jackman/Anne
Hathaway musical but a completely different beast, a cop thriller that takes
its title from the characters who inhabit the run-down Paris suburb where it is
set, Montfermeil, which just happens to be the same place where Victor Hugo
lived and wrote his epic 1862 novel, Les
Misérables.
This movie, directed by Ladj Ly and
featured on the Durban International Film Festival, which grips the audience
from start to finish, is about a three-man anti-crime unit that patrols the
streets, engaging with gangs, families and lots of kids, mainly of Muslim
descent.
The movie has a punchily ironic opening,
showing thousands of French football fans of all shapes, colours and creeds
gathering to celebrate their national team’s victory in the 2018 World Cup. As
we watch the seething crowds, the title of the film comes up which serves as
something of a punch in the gut.
The effect of the World Cup quickly
dissipates as the people of Montfermeil return to their hard life on the
street. Director Ly, making his feature film debut (which won the Jury Prize at
this year’s Cannes Film Festival), vividly portrays the existence of the
under-class as they barely scrape a living in the urban jungle.
The plot, which focuses on what happens
after a youngster steals a lion cub from a visiting circus, throws the suburb
into crisis, with the often blundering police team in the middle of it. The
film’s two main characters, a sympathetic cop and the lion cub thief, are
central to the complex tone of the film and its poignant ending.
Les
Misérables, which has been snapped up for
commercial distribution by Anant Singh’s Videovision Entertainment, is set to
be released in South Africa early next year.
The movie is also showing at 20h30 at
Suncoast 6 on July 25, 2019. – Patrick Compton
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