It's always a pleasure to see foreign films that show countries adapting their own classic stories with all the drama and spectacle that you could get from a Hollywood adaptation, but with much more style and finesse. L'homme qui rit might not be as lovingly celebrated and widely known as some of Victor Hugo's other works but its influence on fantastical, expressionistic fiction is certainly credible. The stark image of the titular man with thick scars on his cheeks that extend his lips into a permanent devilish smile will be very familiar to all fans of popular culture as the inspiration for the Joker, the most cinematically inspiring villain of the DC Batman comics. The Man Who Laughs also undeniably ranks up there with The Elephant Man and The Phantom of the Opera as one of the most poignant depictions of a shy, displaced circus freak who attracts the morbid curiosity of many, the scorn of even more, and the love of a select few.
Although, there seem to be many more who love the quirky novelty of sweet young Gwynplaine (charming Canadian actor Marc-André Grondin), the star of a small travelling theatre who instantly wins over audiences with his unchanging clownish grin, than those who shun him as a monstrous disgrace. At least in this adaptation, our hero sharply polarises the population and highlights the class distinction between grubby, hearty paupers and pampered, grotesque aristocrats.
Gwynplaine has spent most of his life in humbly cheerful poverty with the kindly Ursus (who else but Gérard Depardieu, who predictably receives top billing) who found and fathered Gwynplaine and his other loving companion, the gentle Déa (a beautiful Christa Theret) when they both came to him as orphans left to freeze to death in the snow. He is introduced to the shallow, cutthroat world of aristocracy when the glamorously selfish Duchess Josiane (a deliciously cruel and heavily made-up Emmanuelle Seigner) pays a visit to the Parisian slums to see the famous Laughing Man. Of course he finds her cold and superficial, but also irresistibly opulent, and starts an unsavoury fraternisation with her that he believes is invisible to the sightless Déa, his beloved surrogate sister but also his adoring romantic soul mate, but she can instantly tell. His encounters with Josiane lead to the deliberately delayed revelation that he is the rightful heir to a high royal position of great power and fortune. He hopes to use his seat in parliament to the benefit of his poorer friends, but Déa and Ursus soon make him see what a sadistic snake pit the monarchy is, and coax him away from his sycophantic retainers and conniving royalist butler Barkilphedro (Serge Merlin, the glass man from Amelie) which he leaves with a poetic, theatrical, flourishing revolutionary speech that's no subtler than the sentimental moralising that comes from Déa and Ursus.
The films messages may not be terribly original in their conception or verbal delivery, but they are conveyed exceptionally through the sumptuous visual design from supervising art director Vincent Dizien, and the pleasingly heightened editing by Philippe Bourgueil and cinematography by Gérard Simon, who also worked with director Jean- Pierre Améris on last year's rousing crowd pleaser Romantics Anonymous. This film is also sure to be a delight, not least with its gorgeous fairy-tale palette in the travelling circus scenes and the dazzlingly colourful, ghostly, expressionistic world of the palace fattened, wrinkly monarchists who each want to get a piece of Gwynplaine's inheritance, but not of his eye-offending face – although they are ironically much more cartoonish and laughable in appearance than the laughing man himself.
The film's thematic simplicity is certainly never an issue, as its visual complexity more than makes up for it, and the characters are all perfectly cast and solidly built for driving this intensely moving and inspiring story. Merlin, Seigner and Theret are particularly good matches for their archetypal characters, with Seigner pleasingly demonstrating the value of casting an actress with a strong, commanding presence as a femme fatale instead of having a pretty, delicate naïf do an awkward reading of some very hefty lines. As much as some of us might be sick of seeing Depardieu turn up in every third or fourth French film we see, it's hard to imagine many more French actors capable of exuding such cynical but loving wisdom in such a well-grounded performance.
Our first sight of Grondin as our endearing young hero conjures little more than disappointment that he is not Conrad Veidt. The thin red lines drawn across his face initially pale in comparison to the bright, broad grin given to the character in Paul Leni's 1928 silent adaptation. However, the more restrained makeup job applied here is an effective break from the film's otherwise wildly non-naturalistic design, and Grondin, while much less shy and innocent, brings his own likable adolescent charm to the role that makes the character no less sympathetic.
On the other hand, Hardquanonne (Arben Bajraktaraj), the sinister architect of Gwynplaine's cruel disfigurement, is characterised entirely by the gloomy art direction, some generic villainous dialogue, and some recycled shots of him as a hooded figure brooding menacingly in the background as he did in Taken (2008) and the fifth and seventh Harry Potter films. His big final meeting with Gwynplaine as the young man he has become since he was abandoned at the docks as Hardquanonne was fleeing from prosecution is a mere rushed anti-climax done away with in the first half of the film, perhaps as Améris, in penning the adaptation, suddenly realised what a small role the character is given in the overall conflict.
The absurdly accelerated depiction of Hardquanonne's departure, and Gwynplaine's fateful encounter with Déa and Ursus in the snow, is one of the few real faults of this gloriously dramatic and stylised adaptation of a piece of literature that France should really be more proud to call their own.
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