Why France Is Making <em>Les Mis</em> Again and Why This Time Feels Different
(L to R): 'Les Miserables' producers Olivier Delbosc and Richard Grandpierre
Courtesy of Studiocanal
The French are betting audiences want their epics back.
For much of the 1980s and ’90s, France regularly mounted sprawling prestige productions on a scale few European industries could match. Films like Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), Claude Berri’s Germinal (1993), or Patrice Chéreau’s Queen Margot (1994). But as production costs rose and financing grew more risk-averse, those ambitious historical spectacles gradually disappeared from the big screen, replaced by smaller auteur dramas, comedies and internationally portable genre films.
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Now, after years in retreat, large-scale French period storytelling is mounting a comeback. StudioCanal parent Canal+ has found global audiences for glossy historical series such as Versailles and Marie Antoinette, while Martin Bourboulon’s two-part The Three Musketeers adaptation and Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière’s The Count of Monte Cristo demonstrated there was still an appetite, at least in France, for muscular literary adventure made on a blockbuster scale. This year in Cannes, Antonin Baudry’s De Gaulle: Tilting Iron, the first in an epic two-part biopic on the iconic French leader, premieres out of competition, another sign of renewed confidence in prestige French popular cinema.
Into that landscape comes Fred Cavayé’s Les Misérables, a new action-skewed adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic about crime, justice and redemption, starring Vincent Lindon as Jean Valjean and Tahar Rahim as the relentless Inspector Javert. The film reframes Hugo’s novel — adapted dozens of times throughout the decades but probably best known to modern audiences from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and Tom Hooper’s 2012 film adaptation — as a propulsive chase thriller. Alongside Lindon and Rahim, and veteran actors Camille Cottin and Benjamin Lavernhe, the film boasts a supporting cast of 20- and 30-something up-and-comers, including Noémie Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Tár), Megan Northam (Rabia), Vassili Schneider (The Count of Monte Cristo), Marie Colomb (The Beasts), and Louis Peres (The Sentinels).
The 40 million euro ($47 million) production was put together independently by Richard Grandpierre at Eskwad (The Tuche franchise, Brotherhood of the Wolf) and Olivier Delbosc at Curiosa Films (8 Women, The Wizard of the Kremlin) with backing from Canal+/ StudioCanal, which is releasing the film theatrically across its global footprint and handling worldwide sales at the Cannes film market. Additional funding came from TF1 and Netflix in France.
In an exclusive interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Grandpierre and Delbosc discuss the high-stakes gamble behind reviving the grand French popular epic, why they believed audiences were ready for another Les Misérables, and why Victor Hugo’s 19th century classic still feels politically explosive today.
Why make yet another version of Les Misérables?
Richard Grandpierre We were expecting this question. You’re absolutely right. I can speak for myself, but I’m sure Olivier agrees — in the lifetime of a producer, we all dream of doing something like The Three Musketeers, Monte Cristo, the major productions, the major books in French literature.
But I think what really prompted us to do this movie was our meeting with Fred Cavayé, the director, and hearing him talk about his idea. And the other reason is that for 35 years, nobody had done a version of Les Misérables in France. The last time was with Lino Ventura as Jean Valjean [in 1982, directed by Robert Hossein]. An entire generation has not experienced watching it onscreen. If you take people under 30, I’m sure most of them haven’t read Les Misérables. They only know it through [Hooper’s 2012] musical.
The difference with Fred Cavayé’s vision is that the characters are young. Before, it was just [middle-aged]. We’ve brought in a whole new universe of younger characters, the youth in Victor Hugo’s story, people 15- to 20-year-olds can identify with.
Olivier Delbosc We were very quickly convinced that Victor Hugo’s story is completely timeless. It’s a story of inequality and social misery that unfortunately is still very contemporary.
Grandpierre The strength of the movie comes from the fact that it resonates in today’s world and in today’s life. You’ve probably heard abou