Les Miserables: NZIFF Review

Les Miserables: NZIFF Review

Director Ladj Ly's urgent street film crackles with an unpredictability that's hard to cope with throughout.

Centring on a very familiar trope (a new cop joins an urban crack unit) and stretched out over one day in the poverty-stricken streets of inner Paris, it's the tale of new cop Ruiz as he partners up with the anti-crime brigade's Chris and Gwada on a day when France is celebrating a win in the football.

At first, the nation seems united, but as Ruiz begins to discover there are fragile and uneasy allegiances and pacts which punctuate the daily routine of life on the streets. However, when a lion cub is stolen from a visiting gypsy circus, it becomes the light which is igniting the touch paper and threatens to blow a powderkeg dangerously open.

Electric in every frame, and wildly unpredictable, Ly's street drama is part Training Day, part The Shield and all parts thrilling as it crackles and builds its way through a tension that gnaws at you.

It may begin with France seeming unified but as the banlieues are patrolled, Ly shows how France is still divided with immigration, with seething resentments and with simmering tensions, and uneasy lines to be negotiated by those seemingly in power.

Morals are thrust into the viewers' hands, and while Ly isn't keen to point out who's right or wrong, it appears clear early on as the camera swirls around all sides during various confrontations. Never really overplaying the drama helps greatly as the story unfolds, with tragedy never too far away.

While the Victor Hugo allusions are minimal, but obvious, Les Miserables points to society being to blame as the gritty film ends with a denouement for the ages. It's heart-poundingly thrilling and utterly compelling from beginning to end, and best experienced with a less-you-know attitude to ensure the ride is as taut as you'd want from one of the first unmissable films of the New Zealand International Film Festival.