Les Miserables
Director: Bille August
Bugs out of five: Three
WHILE dozing fitfully through the preview screening of the most recent
remake this year of Les Miserables with the funny little mark over the middle
e, a startling revelation sent my head spinning quicker than the wicked
blade of La Guillotine could have managed in her revolutionary heyday.
I had no idea the bumbling Inspector Clouseau of Peter Sellers and Blake
Edwards fame was modelled almost exactly on the work throughout this Victor
Hugo classic of an equally incompetent French inspector of police, namely
one Inspector Javert.
Javert (Geoffrey Rush on this occasion) dedicates his life to bringing to
justice the petty thief, Jean Valjean (Liam Neeson on this occasion), who
has masqueraded as the decent mayor of a prosperous French village since
his release from two decades of buggery, thuggery and general degradation
in prison.
His cover blown by his own principled hand, Valjean heads to Paris with
his adopted daughter Cosette, only child of the prostitute Fantine (played
on this occasion by Uma Thurman above,and doesn't she look tres Franche,
non!).
Valjean and Cosette take refuge in a Paris nunnery, and the ever-obsessed
Javert, hot on their heels, knows they're in there and he can't get to them.
How frustrating! How do you solve a problem like Javert's?
After a decade or so, the now beautiful Cosette (played on this occasion
by Claire Danes) finally succumbs to the flames of revolutionary passion
– she also thinks the peasants are getting a poor deal – so our
duo decide to leave the convent and set up a new life in a posh part of
Paris. Under their old name, no less!
Valjean's and Javert's paths don't cross again until Javert is on the case
of the young revolutionary leader Marius (played on this occasion by Hans
Matheson) who is madly, deeply, truly in love with Cosette.
So now for some observations about our bumbling Inspector Javert and why
he never made it to a higher commissioned rank.
1. We can forgive Javert's henchmen for failing to see the furniture removal
truck leaving the monastery on the night but how could an obsessed Javert's
system of spies let him down so badly afterwards?
2. Who knows when Javert finally twigs that his nemesis has bolted, but
he's no bloodhound! A top rate copper might have considered the possibility
that a former rich businessmen might have stashed some money aside and be
living in a well-heeled part of town, but not our Javert. To be fair, it
must have been pretty hard scouring the Clayfields, Potts Points and Yarra
Souths of gay Paris and hoping to stumble upon anyone as big and as ugly
as Liam Neeson, considering most Frenchmen around this time in history would
have looked like Ronnie Corbett wearing a beret. The Bug also has
non idea whatsoever how big Paris was in pre-revolutionary 1730s but, hello!
didn't our goofy gendarme even think of checking the Paris telephone directory.
Der!
3. Still, the obsessed Javert has enough smarts left to sniff a cold crime
trail when he stumbles onto one when he goes to warn Cosette's dad of her
dangerous dalliance. Almost. This seasoned copper is thrown off the scent
by a cool impromptu display by Cosette as to why her dad can't see him,
even thought the maid has just said: please wait, he won't be a mo. Still,
you can see the obsessive twinkle in Javert's eagle eye as he says: "Gee,
your surname sounds remarkably like a guy I used to know who was once major
of Vigau!, except in French of course, to which Cosette, ever the actress,
says: Nah, we've been in Paris all our lives, again in French.
4. That's good enough for our Javert, except for a little bit later when
he finds out from his underling (not now, Kato?) that the girl's name is
Cosette. "Cosette" he thunders, "Why didn't you tell me this
before!" Oh, der again! Why didn't he ask!
Javert and Valjean finally confront each other against a backdrop of barricades
and bloodshed as this classic story of conscience, conviction and courage
(the press kit's aliterative words, not mine) reaches its denouement, which
I understand is French for ending.
Being a rather ignorant fillum reviewer who hasn't read the Victor Hugo
classic - I didn't even know that the man who invented the motor mower wrote
books as well - or can recall any of the previous 821 versions of this classic
tale, I'm not going to pretend to understand what the final scene is supposed
to represent.
But my bet is that just as his modern-day counterpart Clouseau never had
much luck with women, Inspector Javert was a closet poof who realises right
at the end of his life that Valjean was always going to be far too good
for him. This startling revelation promptly sends him in-seine.
- Don Gordon-Brown
There's Something About Mary
Director: the Farrelly Brothers.
Bugs out of five: Four and a bit
The review on Cameron Diaz's latest film will be uploaded as soon as our film critic gets back from the toilet. - Editor
