“The problem is not the fall but the landing”.
25 years have passed since Hate, the film that revealed Mathieu Kassovitz, but nothing seems to have changed in the Parisian suburbs .

Les Misérables, Ladj Ly's directorial debut, narrates two days in the life of three policemen operating in Montfermeil, one of the locations in Victor Hugo's novel.

In this squalid suburb , like many others, among dilapidated buildings and rubbish moves a varied humanity of the last, of outcasts, of those excluded from society who survive as best they can, often on the margins of legality and beyond.

There are the gypsies with their circus from which a lion cub was stolen.

There is the "mayor" of the city, who in reality is a sort of neighborhood boss, responsible for maintaining order with bribes .

There is Salah, a redeemed former criminal who now tries to preach peace and to whom one turns in case of need.

There are other criminals who collude with the police.<4 >

And then there are them, the children, Issa (Issa Perica) and his friends, the victims of this system.

In the neighborhood, apart from the degradation, the garbage and a probable future already written by criminals, there is nothing except Islam, which in fact is the only institution present.

As per tradition the police are arrogant and violent, especially Chris who behaves like a sheriff and who is contrasted by Ruiz's attempt to remain human.

In the midst of the evening tears that will show us Gwada's fragility in one of the most beautiful sequences of this powerful and vibrant debut; let's talk about the scene in which our three return home showing the viewer all their desperate loneliness.

Ladj Ly creates a fast-paced action movie, between handheld camera and aerial shots taken via drones, at the center of which there 'it is this piece of the world that is the true protagonist of a film capable of marrying the experience of a documentary maker with the lessons of American cinema (Detroit by Kathryn Bigelow immediately comes to mind < 36>http://www.euroroma.net/6427/ARTE%20E%20SPETTACOLO/detroit-kathryn-bigelow-alle-prese-con-un-racconto-politico-e-di-denuncia-.html< 37>).

The result is an astonishing debut that gives us the infinite facets of its many characters through very few touches that demonstrate the rare ability to bring out the psychologies of this crowd through the actions, the places and glances.

There is a continuous tension that runs through the entire story, a fuse ready to make everything explode in a final sequence which is a true essay in action cinema, with a management of perfect spaces of a consummate master.

And then there is that look, capable of enclosing an entire world.

Because, once again, the problem is the landing and nothing can go right in this portion of the world, perhaps because, as the director recalls at the end, quoting Hugo, "there are no bad grass or bad men, there are only bad farmers".

EMILIANO BAGLIO