SEPTEMBER RUNDOWN

​Les Miserables (in cinemas) - ***

Awards for most misleading film title of the year are in order for ‘Les Miserables’ (2020). Despite its title, Ladj Ly’s film is not based on Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel nor the musical it inspired. Its relation to the classic comes from its setting - the Paris banlieue of Montfermeil - where Hugo originally wrote his book. And from a quote which plays out in the end credits with the line “remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators”.

Nope. This French police drama is about three police officers policing one of Paris’s most deprived communes in the aftermath of France’s 2018 World Cup victory. There’s Stephane (Damien Bonnard) who has just moved to Paris. He’s partnered with squad leader Chris (Alexis Mananti) who often aggressively abuses his power and Gwada (Djebril Zonga) who remains complacent with Chris’s abuse.

On the opposing side of the law are a group of delinquent teens led by the mischievous Issa (Issa Perica). They land themselves in trouble with the law when Issa steals a lion cub called Johnny from a local circus. 

The cub’s owner - Zorro (Raymond Lopez) - goes to a man called “The Mayor” with the threat of returning with firearms if Johnny is not returned. Chris and his squadron are hereby tasked with retrieving the cub.

There’s echoes of ‘La Haine’ (1995) about this film’s stripping down of Paris’ romantic, glossy image. Where ‘Emily in Paris’ (2020-) tweets and twitters the Arc du Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower and Versailles, ‘Les Miserables’ portrait of the French capital is one of sweatshops, romany lion tamers and Muslim fanatics.

Almamy Kanounte gives an incendiary performance as Salah - the owner of a local restaurant and key member of Montfermeil’s Islamic community. There’s a tense scene where Chris attempts to illegally arrest Buzz - a black teen who’s drone filmed the cops shooting Issa with a flash-ball. After a nail-biting confrontation, Stephane convinces Salah to hand over the memory card stored on the drone.

This film does a really good job of evoking the hate and prejudice that runs rampant in Paris’ underbelly especially and worryingly personified by men in uniform. One wonders had Buzz been a white boy whether the cops would attempt to illegally arrest him or, if Issa was white, would they have seen red and pulled out their gun so quickly? These are all interesting moral dilemmas that have urgent contemporary relevance in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

Given the realism of the first half, it’s a shame ‘Les Miserables’ swings dangerously close to melodrama in its third act. In the aftermath of Issa being shot in the face, it’s down to the cops to try and clear up the mess and track down the drone that filmed them. Their attempts to do so become increasingly far-fetched and unrealistic.

‘Les Miserables’ won the 2020 Cesar - France’s most prestigious prize - for Best Film and Best Director for Ladj Ly who is the first black man to win the prize. It should have been a ‘La Haine’ for the 21st century with realistic insights into racism and police brutality. I guess the first half does have that, but the finale takes too many leaps of credibility to be believed.

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The Devil All the Time (on Netflix) - ***

‘The Devil All the Time’ (2020) is based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Donald Ray Pollock (also the film’s narrator). It’s a Southern USA-set Gothic melodrama and features a top-range cast including Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Bill Skarsgard, Jason Clarke, Mia Wasikowska and Eliza Scanlen amongst numerous others.

The film takes place in the aftermath of World War II and centres on a small town beset with corrupt and brutal characters. One of them is Willard Russell (Skarsgard) - a tortured veteran of the war in the South Pacific who is struggling to save his lovely wife Charlotte (Haley Bennett) from death by Cancer despite him pouring sacrificial blood on his prayer log every night. 

Then there’s husband n’ wife serial killer duo Carl (Clarke) and Sandy (Riley Keough) Henderson who patrol American highways in search of male models to photograph and murder. And Arvin Eugene Russell (Tom Holland) who is Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son and a decent, but occasionally violent man.

There’s some great performances here from such a high-calibre cast. I particularly liked Tom Holland who gets to go darker than we’ve ever seen him before as Arvin - a world away from his kidsy Spider-Man and proof of something approaching an acting range. Bill Skarsgard, on the other hand, appears to have mellowed away from his hair-raising turn as Pennywise in ‘It’ (2017) and he gets the movie’s most emotional arc as the long-suffering, God-fearing former soldier Willard who is desperately trying to keep his wife alive.

Robert Pattinson - continuing his scenery-chewing streak from ‘Tenet’ (2020) - has a lot of fun as Reverend Preston Teagardin - a seemingly charming, but morally corrupt preacher who ends up raping and abandoning Lenora (Eliza Scanlen) when she becomes pregnant.

But my favourite performance comes from Harry Melling (looking a lot slimmer than when he was in ‘Harry Potter’ (2001-2011)!) as the spider-wielding priest Roy Laferty. He gets the movie’s creepiest and crawliest moment when he pours venomous spiders on his head during a sermon to emphasise his faith to God.

There’s more moments of full-bodied gothic horror in the opening segment where Skarsgard’s Willard finds the barely living Gunnery Sergeant Miller Jones skinned and nailed to a cross by the Japanese in the pacific. The amount of red flesh n’ blood appears to have wandered off the set of David Cronenberg’s ‘Naked Lunch’ (1991).

This movie has a problem with navigating the many gear changes between the different timelines and storylines and it can leave certain of them to feel underdeveloped. I didn’t feel there was much time spent on Scanlen’s Lenora, for example. A shame, really, as Scanlen is a terrific actress - so brilliant in ‘Babyteeth’ (2020) and ‘Little Women’ (2019).

I couldn’t help, but feel Director Antonio Campos was a little too afraid to fully go to the dark side. Despite the bits n’ pieces of blooded terror, ‘The Devil All the Time’ is too consumed in its multiple storylines to really have fun with its horror. As a horror fan, I wanted more.

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The Broken Hearts Gallery (in cinemas) - ***

‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’ (2020) is an anti rom-com in vein of ‘When Harry Met Sally’ (1989) and ‘(500) Days of Summer’ (2009). Where most rom-coms involve a couple falling in love, this movie - as this title suggests - is about two people who have had their hearts broken and are no longer in love. Naturally, meeting each other immediately causes a connection that develops over the cause of the runtime. As they start to, well, fall in love, proceedings get more predictable. But this one gets by on the charm and chemistry of its leading performers who I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of.

Geraldine Vishwanathan is Lucy Gulliver - a young woman reeling from her latest break-up. One night she gets into a cab driven by a really creepy guy called Nick (Dacre Montgomery) claiming to be a guy called “Adolfo”. He’s also coping with a break-up and Lucy happens to be an emotional hoarder. This inspires the duo to set up a gallery containing trinkets from people’s previous relationships.

I liked this movie. But then I am a sucker for “anti rom-coms”. I love ‘When Harry Met Sally’, for example, because it takes such a realistic look at just why men and women can’t be just friends. Why is it that there’s always supposed to be an attraction involved in a male-female friendship?

‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’ isn’t in the same league as Nora Ephron’s aforementioned masterpiece, but it does share its passion and understanding for a more down-to-earth view of romantic life. A view that relationships aren’t always so happy and lovey-dubby and that break-ups really can cause people’s hearts to break and can feel as though they can never be unbroken.

Geraldine Viswanathan is lovely in the lead role - whip-smart and sassy when she needs to be, but sweet and vulnerable when the story arises. She really made me believe Lucy was broken hearted and struggling to cope with the end of her previous relationship. 

Meanwhile Dacre Montgomery is hot and slightly sociopathic as Nick - a definite new “creepy crush” for women. In the scene where he turns around in the cab to reveal he’s not Adolfo and, in fact, a creepy stalker, I was on the edge of my seat and seriously yucked out. It’s good he starts to mellow over the course of the movie and I completely believed he too had lost a loved one to a relationship split.

Of course, like in ‘When Harry Met Sally’, it’s obvious that the two leads will find some sort of attraction and get together by the end. And, like in that movie, the closer the couple get, the more predictable the movie gets as it inches toward that inevitable happy ending.

There’s also a storyline about Lucy trying to find her long-lost mother which felt very tacked-on and underdeveloped. But the stars have really nice chemistry and I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of both of them in the future. 

I saw this at Cineworld shortly before they closed and, bar a man sitting near the front, was the only person in the screening. Meanwhile the showing for the dreadful ‘After We Collided’ (2020) was packed with teenage girls.

It’s a shame, really. ‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’ isn’t and didn’t change the world in 2020, but its existence just makes this year a little more bearable. I wish more people saw it. So much better than any film executively produced by Selena Gomez deserves to be...

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