"You’ve gone the wrong way; it’s the beatings that make beasts ferocious. By striving for order, you end up creating chaos." The social side of Victor Hugo’s famous classic is common knowledge (countless filmmakers have already tackled this colossus of world literature), and Fred Cavayé is now taking it on himself, gathering together a heavyweight French cast and the means for an epic, historical and novelistic fresco on a spectacular scale, interweaving multiple characters over a near-40-year time period.

Unveiled in competition in the 74th San Sebastián International Film Festival and opening with a quotation ("It’s from the hell of the poor that the paradise of the rich is made") taken from another of the author’s books, Les Misérables strikes a chord with our contemporary era, in which widening inequalities have reached new heights and certain democracies resemble monarchies of old. This parallel goes hand in hand with French cinema’s current trend of dusting off heritage adaptations (The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte-Cristo), largely stripping them of historical depth and adopting the codes of genre films. And this is the path Fred Cavayé has taken.

"Five years of hard labour for a loaf of bread – you call that justice?" It’s ultimately 19 years which Jean Valjean (played in his youth by Louis Peres, and then by a steely Vincent Lindon with flashes of Bruce Willis) spends in prison in Toulon, his initial sentence extended on account of escape attempts and other fights for survival. Upon his release, however, he crosses paths with a very generous priest and finds redemption. Meanwhile, in Waterloo (it’s 1815), the Thénardiers (Camille Cottin and Benjamin Lavernhe) are stripping corpses on the battlefield. In parallel, Javert (Tahar Rahim), who was disowned by his mother during a miserable childhood, rises through the police ranks with hatred in his heart. These destinies collide to dramatic effect as, years later, Valjean becomes a factory owner and the  benevolent mayor of a small town in the north, all under a false identity, while single mother Fantine (Noémie Merlant) has left her little Cosette (Giulia Sagnier and then Megan Northam) in the care of the Thénardiers…

Stringing together the many episodes in this vast saga at a very brisk pace, the film gives pride of place to action (brawls, tailing people, prison breaks, shootouts, chases, barricades during the 1832 Paris uprising, etc.) and leans hard into melodrama and archetypes (good and evil, and the sometimes shifting line between them). This emphatic attempt to energise its (rich) literary material, by turning it into a "modern western", makes it both a big, crowd-pleasing, family-oriented spectacle that’s fairly entertaining and a rather odd choice for the competitive showcase of an international festival.

Les Misérables was produced by Eskwad and Curiosa Films, in co-production with TF1 Films Production, Umedia and StudioCanal (the latter of whom are also handling international sales).