- Tweeter
republish
Filmed in immersion in Montfermeil, in the suburbs of Paris, honored at the Cannes Film Festival with the Jury Prize, chosen to present France at the Oscars, already sold in more than fifty countries, this Wednesday, November 20, "Les Miserables" Ladj Ly is finally released in theaters, as a universal manifesto against social misery.
He spent his childhood and youth in Clichy-Montfermeil, where Victor Hugo located part of his Misérables . Today, Ladj Ly, a French director of Malian origin, renews with his first feature film the genre of suburban films, 24 years after The Hate of Mathieu Kassovitz. At the time, the film gave new life to French cinema, but did not change the fate of commuters.
" The man with the camera "
Fourteen years after the 2005 riots that boosted his desire to become "the man with the camera", Ladj Ly filmed violence and misery, but especially human beings in the city of Bosquets, in Montfermeil , a difficult neighborhood in the suburbs. And since his success at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the director does not stop to repeat on any occasion: " Yes, this film is a cry of alarm. Since the riots of 2005, things have not really changed .
The first scene of the Miserables shows a country jubilant draped in a red white blue flag, a young suburban goes out to Paris to celebrate the victory of the Blues at the World Cup. This day, everyone is French first and proud to be French, there is no more skin color or social classes ...
The day after, return to reality. We see Stéphane (Damien Bonnard) arrive in the neighborhood. The young policeman has just been transferred from Cherbourg aux Bosquets to be close to his family. But he has no idea that, by integrating the famous BAC, the Anti-crime Brigade of Montfermeil, in the 93, he will live the worst day of his life ...
Ladj Ly, a child of Montfermeil
Les Misérables , the title of the film, " is a nod to say : a century later, misery is still there on this territory, " said Ladj Ly. The Bosquets district has long served as an open-air studio. For years, he was filming the police here during their interventions. To tap into reality is the incredible strength of the film. Because at the origin of the scenario, is a real violent arrest that the director himself filmed with his camera in October 2008 and posted then on Internet. This police blunder where cops hit a young handcuffed Bosquets will be the first where police will be sentenced following a video. Ladj Ly becomes a star beyond his quarters.
After hundreds of videos shot in his neighborhood while exposing himself to the wrath of the police, Ladj Ly gave himself the necessary time to capture this environment remained almost invisible to the cinema. Better yet, he manages to show it in a new way and to transmit it with a 360-degree vision and not only because of the drones employees who fly over the city. Where most media do not dare to enter with their camera, he has been at home for 38 years. In Montfermeil, he learned everything about cinema. From "cop watch" videos to mini-camera, he has now arrived at the top of the seventh art and asked to represent France at the Oscars.
" Real life "
His actors say they do not feel like playing a character: " It looks a lot like real life, " said young Al-Hassan Ly aka Buzz in the movie. For Ladj Ly, the suburbs, it is this patchwork that one sees when it makes fly its drone above the city: the gray of the towers becomes then a colored landscape, the degraded buildings turn into bricks Lego, to compose and rebuild at will. This is his playground for his camera. With him and his drone, we take the height on the suburbs. In total immersion, he examines everything: from the roof to the cellar, through the stairwells, the apartments, to the Kebab run by a Muslim brother, as radical as it is filled with Koranic wisdom, and supposed to hold the neighborhood.
Ladj Ly does not only show these often invisible spaces, he makes them live with all the diversity of this district inhabited by the miserable people of today. Then appear on images of incredible density and expression, young children wandering, a bunch of girls standing up to the geek-voyeur, dealers rendering service to the authorities, cheap prostitutes, Muslim brothers pacifying the neighborhood, " the Obama to us "in a football shirt signed" Mayor 93 ", a mother who does not let himself be, but especially the three" bacqueux ", policemen at the end of the nerves always a finger of the burr ...
Impose its law
It is with Stephane, the brigadier with greasy hair nicknamed Pento, novice to Bosquets, that one will discover the district, its manners and especially its drifts. With his team-mates Chris (Alexis Manenti), an over-excited and racist police officer, and Gwada (Djebril Zonga), a black cop who is treated as a traitor, he quickly learns that BAC is not quite an ordinary police. In the image of this abandoned territory, composed of many clans where everyone tries to police and impose his law and his authority on others.
After a burr of too much, the neighborhood ignites. Surprisingly, despite an incredible violence on screen that goes up to a face-to-face meeting between a young Molotov cocktail and a police officer's weapon, the film ends almost consensually by quoting Victor Hugo " My friends, remember this, there are no weeds or bad men. There are only bad farmers . The director does not judge anyone by creating understanding for everyone. In the end, everyone can recognize themselves in the portrait painted by Ladj Ly.
" Cop watch " or who looks at who ?
On the other hand, by sending all the parties back to back, he gives reason to everyone. Here lies perhaps the only weakness of this extraordinary film: by resolutely choosing the middle way, the filmmaker finally makes the subject of the film as universal as harmless. The future will tell, if Les Misérables , galvanized by the ovations of the world of cinema and already bought by Amazon for the United States, will help more suburbanites to be respected than the small video "cop watch" put online by Ladj Ly, ten years ago.
► To listen also: the Rendez-vous Culture of 20/11/2019 is dedicated to Les Misérables de Ladj Ly
► Also to listen: All the cinemas of the world: Ladj Ly comments in exclusivity the first reel of its film "Les Miserables"
► To listen also: You will tell me news : With Ladj Ly, the Misérables have right of city