EXCLUSIVE: Fred Cavayé is gearing up for the shoot this summer of his adaptation of Les Misérables.
Vincent Lindon is set to star as Jean Valjean opposite Tahar Rahim as his nemesis Inspector Javert, with the ensemble cast also including Camille Cottin, Noémie Merlant and Benjamin Lavernhe.
The literary costume drama marks a departure for Cavayé who broke out as a director with 2008 thriller Anything for Her (Pour Elle), starring Lindon as a man on a mission to free his wife (Diane Kruger) from jail after she is arrested for murder, and he is convinced of her innocence.
The movie was remade in English in 2010 as The Next Three Days with Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks in the starring roles.
Since then, Cavayé has also made his name as a comedy director on films such as Dany Boon-starrer Penny Pincher! (Radin!) and Nothing to Hide, the French version of Italian hit Perfect Strangers, before moving into more serious territory in 2021 with World War Two drama Farewell, Mr. Haffmann.
Hugo’s epic literary classic set against the backdrop of the social and political turmoil of post-revolutionary France has inspired more than 45 feature film adaptations to date.
Cavayé is promising a new interpretation revolving around redeemed parole-breaker Jean Valjean’s bid to keep out of the clutches of Inspector Javert, which also gives a voice to hitherto secondary female characters such as Madame Thénardier (Cottin) and Fantine (Merlant).
The director talked to Deadline as Studiocanal launches sales on the adaptation in Cannes.
DEADLINE: Les Misérables marks quite a departure from the types of films you’re usually associated with…
CAVAYÉ: I already did a costume drama with Farewell, Mr. Haffmann, which was set in the 1940s, but this is in a very different vein. I’ve been dreaming of making a big literary, costume drama for a long time, and notably Les Misérables.
My point of departure is that I started my career making action thrillers, before moving into comedies. I wanted to get back to making thrillers but didn’t want to repeat what I had done on my past thrillers, namely tell a story about an ordinary man who finds himself caught up in an extraordinary adventure.
During the Covid lockdown, I re-read Les Misérables, which is already an endeavour because it’s more than 2,000 pages long. I realized it could be a way of getting back to things I want to do again in that there was scope to make a version of Les Misérables that could be close to The Fugitive [the 1993 film in which Harrison Ford plays a man who goes on the run after he is wrongly accused of killing his wife, with Tommy Lee Jones in hot pursuit as a US marshal].
DEADLINE: So, it’s going to be an action film?
CAVAYÉ: The film will retain the literary, dramatic side, the depth of the characters, and the social issues at the heart of the story, which unfortunately remain increasingly relevant to do today. But there’s an aspect of the novel, which ultimately makes it an adventure story, albeit with depth.
I want to ramp that up in a way which has never really been highlighted in other adaptations. The film will remain true to Victor Hugo’s novel, at the same time as slipping in thriller codes and dynamics, such as a chase scene when Valjean steals the loaf of bread.
DEADLINE: The events in the novel take place from the late 1790s up to just beyond the Paris Uprising of 1832, how are you going to deal with this in your adaptation?
CAVAYÉ: That was one of the big challenges. It’s a story taking place over several periods, from when Valjean is around 20 to when he dies at around 60 years old… so it spans 40 years.
One way of dealing with the timespan in a feature film would have been to focus on a particular period. Instead, I’ve expanded the timeframe, drawing on threads in the novel, to go into the childhood backstories of some of the characters such as Javert, for example, to explain their actions later on.
My growing love for TV series, which I now watch just as much as films, has really shifted the way I approach writing. Seven or eight years ago, I would have tackled a story very differently.
I’ve written the screenplay a bit like a series, so that that the characters initially tell their stories from several points of view, and these points of view will eventually find themselves in the same place, at the same time, precisely for the action to begin, for better or for worse. It’s a device that works well in series and I’ve tried to apply it here, to create a modern adaptation of Les Misérables that’s very different from what’s already been done.
DEADLINE: Les Misérables will follow in the wake of the big Dimitri-Rassam-produced French-language literary adaptations The Three Musketeers duology, directed by Martin Bourboulon as well as The Count of Monte-Cristo by Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte. Will you be aiming for the same level of production value and scope?
CAVAYÉ: Firstly, I should say that if The Count of Monte-Cristo hadn’t been such a success, I would probably have had a lot of moretrouble getting this film off the ground. Its success proved to people that this type of film can appeal to audiences.
The Count of Monte-Cristo and The Three Musketeers also set the bar very high, and we’ll be aiming to match that, with similar budgets, but with a different type of story, to make a mainstream popular and spectacular film, which, like the earlier films in my career, has audiences on the edge of their seats.
DEADLINE: The feature is produced by Richard Grandpierre at Eskwad Productions (The Tuche Family franchise, Big Bug, Brotherhood of the Wolf) and Olivier Delbosc at Curiosa Films (The Quiet Son, Of Blood and Money). How did that come together?
CAVAYÉ: Olivier Delbosc produced my first film, Anything for Her, while it’s the first time I’m working with Richard Grandpierre. It’s quite funny how it all came about. As I said before, during lockdown, I re-read Les Misérables. I then wrote a 25-page synopsis explaining how I envisaged my adaptation.
I called my agent, who had no idea I had been working on an adaptation. She said, “Just a week ago, Richard Grandpierre and Vincent Lindon told me they would like to do Les Misérables”. I called them and told them that I also wanted to do an adaptation. I already know Vincent well as we’ve worked on two films together… which helped speed things up too.
DEADLINE: What kind of budget are you working with and whom have you financed it?
CAVAYÉ: It’s around the same as The Count of Monte-Cristo and The Musketeers, €37 million ($41M). Studiocanal is financing with TF1, Netflix and Canal +, which all know that you need to put the right resources into this sort of film.
DEADLINE: When and where are you going to shoot?
CAVAYÉ: We’re shooting from July 21 to November 10 in Paris and Bordeaux. It’s very difficult to find locations in Paris, very little of pre-1850 Paris remains intact after Haussmann’s transformation of the city, whereas there are bits of Bordeaux that can pass for Paris in that period